you might still be able to make this work, but twitter has changed their API stuff. Here's an email i got from <support@twitter.com>.
Hello, This is a notice that your app - deletingTomsTweets - has been suspended from accessing the Twitter API. Please visit developer.twitter.com to sign up to our new Free, Basic or Enterprise access tiers. More information can be found on our developer community forums. Regards, Twitter Developer Platform "
Deleting all your tweets, favorites, and follows using python...while you still can! Read more below about why I wanted to.
The following steps create a virtual environment, and I deal with API credential handling using dynaconf. Alternatively, just copy birdBye.py, install tweepy and tqdm, and insert your API variables directly in the file to run.
- Pull this repo.
- Set up your virtual environment, e.g. using cmd:
> py -m venv .venv> .venv\Scripts\activate.bat> py -m pip install --upgrade pip
- install the needed packages and environment
> py -m pip install -r requirements.txt> dynaconf init -f toml- You can update .gitignore, if you'd like.
-
Get credentials to the twitter API here. Or reach out to me if you want me to see if i can run this for you.
- You have to have a twitter account.
- Ensure your app is part of a project, set up user authentication, and apply for elevated access.
-
Update your
.secrets.tomlfile with your API credentials and your Twitter user ID. (Or just put these directly in thebyeBird.pycode).- api_key=""
- api_key_secret=""
- access_token=""
- access_token_secret=""
- bearer_token=""
- user_id=""
There's no going back, so make sure you're ready to delete all your twitter stuff.
> py -m birdBye
Why might you want to delete everything? Do you want this guy and some sycophants to have access to your stuff, monetizing your attention and actions? Using your tweets to tune an AI? Selling your data to anyone they want?
You could just delete your whole account.
Some more specific bad things about twitter and the muskmelon, who has said that "at the end of the day, having some criticism is fine, ya know, it's really not that bad. I mean, I am constantly attacked on twitter, frankly, and I don't mind."
Instead of providing accountability through public data, Twitter has decided to make their API access prohibitively expensive ($100/month). So sorry activists, emergency workers, researchers, developers, and everyone else interested in keeping tabs on an influential media company roiled in scandal, criticism, and decline! Seems pretty bad!
When the melonhusk acquisition deal went through, the new ceo went on a firing spree, laying off thousands, including people in charge of safety and oversight. They're overworking their remaining staff, going "hardcore mode" and having workers sleep at office, with cascading fallout of security issues, leaks of pricate user information, and disinformation on multiple fronts.
And despite these kinds of cost cutting measures (in addition to making people pay to access 2-factor authentication and twitter blue), the company is still floundering. They are not paying the rent they owe on multiple properties. They could face hefty fines in the EU.
Don't forget the right wing propoganda, doxxing, potential fraud, international legal and regulatory violations, the climate misinformation, or the restriction of free press. There's also all the bratty, adolescent absurdities. The 51 year old manchild CEO tweeted two vaguely pornographic memes (one showing the washington monument as a giant's dick), rehashing his constant early 2000s edgelord cosplay. A couple days before, just after one of his tweets didn't get as much engagement as he wanted, the muskmelon ordered engineers to increase propogation of his posts.
All the aforementioned stuff is pretty recent. But lots of these issues run deep in both twitter and tech in general. evil sentient Bing wasn't on my 2023 bingo board.
Tesla factories are unsafe, the company forced its factory employees to labor illegally during the global pandemic (with hundreds contracting COVID while working against local laws), and the CEO recently illegally fired employees for attempting to unionize. Plus the cars themselves are extremely dangerous, with hundreds of thousands being recalled all the time, and deaths resulting from Teslas crashing into emergency vehicles. If his companies can only make expensive, buggy, unsafe cars--and recklessly launching rockets--how can twitter take care of its security and misinformation problems?
Check it out. @tomasito@mas.to. Or just get rid of it all.
Reach out if I can help!