deletex : Twitter history eraser

Requirements

This application uses OAuth 1 for user authentication. To obtain a consumer key and a consumer key secret, the application has to be registered at Twitter Developer Platform https://developer.twitter.com - see Projects & apps -> (your app) -> keys and tokens -> consumer key

Note: X had introduced paid access level, BUT some features, like deletion of posts by list, still work (as of 2024.07.10)

Usage

Help

deletex h
deletex -h
deletex help
deletex --help

Common parameters

• -c / --config - path to configuration file. See config.example.yaml. Default value is config.yaml, so configuration file will be read from current directory.

A typical workflow

• Register a client Twitter app at https://developer.twitter.com, obtain consumer API keys, save them to config.yaml. Note: it's NOT needed if you would like just to generate a list of tweets to delete without actual deletion; Twitter credentials are needed for API calls.
• Generate and download a twitter archive: Link
• Convert the data/tweets.js file in arctive from Javascript to JSON Lines format
• Filter the JSON Lines file using expressions (see below)
• Delete tweets using the filtered JSON lines file

1 Convert of Javascript tweet dump file into JSON Lines

Twitter provides dumps as JavaScript files which are inapproptiate for analysis and filtering of records. This command converts the original JavaScript file into JSON Lines format.

deletex tweets:dump:to_jsonl \
    -i /home/john/somefolder/twitter_dump/data/tweet.js \
    -o /home/john/somefolder/twitter_dump_processed/tweets.json

2. Filter the JSON Lines file

deletex tweets:jsonl:filter \
    -i /home/john/somefolder/twitter_dump_processed/tweets.json \
    -o /home/john/somefolder/twitter_dump_processed/tweets.filtered.json \
    -e "created_time >= '2022-01-01 00:00:00' && created_time < '2022-02-01 00:00:00'"

3. Delete tweets using the filtered JSON Lines file

deletex tweets:delete:using_csv \
    -c $PWD/.local/config.yaml \
    -i /home/john/somefolder/twitter_dump_processed/tweets.filtered.json

Filtering expressions

The govaluate library is used to parse expressions. Following tweet properties are defined for each record:

• created_time
• favorite_count
• full_text
• id
• retweet_count

Examples of expressions

favorite_count + (retweet_count * 20) > 100
created_time >= '2022-01-01 00:00:00' && created_time < '2022-02-01 00:00:00'