Amnesia for Twitter
This is a simple script that will automatically delete all of your tweets and likes that are older than a specified number of days. If you use Twitter for conversation and not posterity then you'll like Amnesia.
If you want a copy of your tweets for your own personal records, make sure you download your Twitter archive before running Amnesia.
Remember: Amnesia cannot delete offline copies (e.g., screenshots, or web crawling) of your tweets and likes. Good luck.
Requirements
You'll need the following.
- Python 2.7 (3 probably works, too)
- A Twitter App (create one for free)
- OAuth tokens (get these after creating your app)
Setting Amnesia Up
Download Code and Dependencies
git clone https://github.com/jmathai/amnesia.git
cd amnesia
virtualenv venv
source venv/bin/activate
pip install -r requirements.txt
Configure Amnesia
You'll need to copy the configs-sample.py
to configs.py
and update the
oauth values.
cp configs-sample.py configs.py
The delete_after_days
value specifies that you want to delete all tweets
older than that many days.
Using Amnesia
Running Amnesia
By default, Amnesia will delete tweets/likes.
If you just want to try a dry run, make sure you set dry_run=True
in configs.py
.
Either way, you must run amnesia.py
.
Cleaning up
If you like, you may revoke access to your Twitter account after using Amnesia.
Automating Amnesia
You may want to periodically run amnesia so that it keeps your tweets pruned.
I use my crontab.
On Linux or OS X you can edit your crontab by typing crontab -e
in a
terminal.