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/trishankkarthik/amnesia.git
cd amnesia
virtualenv venv
source venv/bin/activate
pip3 install -r requirements.txt

Configure Amnesia

You'll need to copy the configs-sample.json to configs.json and update the oauth values.

cp configs-sample.json configs.json

The delete_after_days value specifies that you want to delete all tweets older than that many days.

Using Amnesia

Running Amnesia

Unzip your Twitter archive, and copy tweet.js and like.js to this folder.

By default, Amnesia will delete tweets/likes. You may run it like so in a shell:

source venv/bin/activate
time amnesia.py &>> amnesia.log

And tail -f amnesia.log in another shell to monitor its progress.

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.