delete_tweets.py

#!/bin/python3
"""
A Python script to delete tweets.

• It uses tweet ids from a Twitter archive to bypass the Twitter API limit. Use this script if you need to delete more
than 3200 tweets and what's in your archive is a tweets.csv file.

• If you have more than 3200 tweets but your archive has a tweets.json file use this:
https://gist.github.com/flesueur/bcb2d9185b64c5191915d860ad19f23f

• If you are deleting less than 3200 tweets use this:
https://www.mathewinkson.com/2015/03/delete-old-tweets-selectively-using-python-and-tweepy

• This script is built upon the above 2 scripts, please note I haven't ran any of the above should
there be issues.

• Script runs on Python3.

• To preserve more recent tweets, specify the number of days to keep on line 55. To preserve specific tweets in the
to delete category add them to the tweets_to_keep list on line 56

Requires:
• tweepy installed
• The following credentials from your Twitter app: consumer_key, consumer_secret, access_token and access_token_secret. More
on how to create a Twitter app here: https://developer.twitter.com/en/docs/basics/apps/overview.html
• An archive of your tweets. Add the path to the tweets.csv file on line 48. More on how to do this here:
https://help.twitter.com/en/managing-your-account/how-to-download-your-twitter-archive
"""

import tweepy
from datetime import datetime, timedelta
import csv
import pytz


# Keys
consumer_key = ''
consumer_secret = ''
access_token = ''
access_token_secret = ''

auth = tweepy.OAuthHandler(consumer_key, consumer_secret)
auth.set_access_token(access_token, access_token_secret)

print('Authorization request sent')
api = tweepy.API(auth)

print('Authorization successful, loading tweets archive')
with open('/path/to/tweets.csv', 'r') as f:
  reader = csv.reader(f)

  next(reader, None)  # Skip header

  tweets_list = list(reader) # Convert CSV to list

days_to_keep = 903 # number of days you want to keep, if you want to keep tweets from the last year the number will be 365
tweets_to_keep = [] # ids of tweets you don't want to delete
cutoff_date = datetime.utcnow() - timedelta(days=days_to_keep)

print('Deleting tweets...')
for tweet in tweets_list:

    tweet_id = tweet[0] # tweet[0] is the tweet_id column
    tweet_timestamp = datetime.strptime(tweet[3],  "%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S %z") # tweet[3] is the timestamp column
    print(tweet_timestamp, '<', cutoff_date)
    if (tweet_id not in tweets_to_keep and tweet_timestamp < cutoff_date.replace(tzinfo=pytz.UTC)):
        try:
            # Delete tweet
            api.destroy_status(tweet_id)
            print('[ - ] tweet with id %s deleted' %(tweet_id))
        except Exception:
            pass

print('Done deleting tweets!')