Mass deletion of old Tweets from Twitter

mass-delete-tweets.py

# this is based on https://pushpullfork.com/i-deleted-tweets/ and http://digitallearning.middcreate.net/tips/deleting-tweets-non-techie-starts-her-personal-information-environmentalism-journey-with-lots-of-help/

import tweepy
import csv

consumer_key = ''
consumer_secret = ''
access_key = ''
access_secret = ''

def read_csv(file):
    """
    reads a CSV file into a list of lists
    """
    with open(file, encoding = 'utf-8') as csvfile:
        reader = csv.reader(csvfile, delimiter = ',')
        rows = []
        for line in reader:
            row_data = []
            for element in line:
                row_data.append(element)
            if row_data != []:
                rows.append(row_data)
    rows.pop(0)
    return(rows)

auth = tweepy.OAuthHandler(consumer_key, consumer_secret)
auth.set_access_token(access_key, access_secret)
api = tweepy.API(auth)
print("Authenticated as: %s" % api.me().screen_name)

tweets = read_csv('./tweets.csv')

tweets_marked = []

month_list = ['2017-01', '2017-02', '2017-03', '2017-04', '2017-05', '2017-06' '2017-07', '2017-09', '2017-10', '2017-11', '2017-12', '2018-01', '2018-02', '2018-03', '2018-04', '2018-05', '2018-06']

for tweet in tweets:
   if tweet[3][0:7] in month_list:
       tweets_marked.append(tweet)

print(len(tweets_marked), 'tweets marked for deletion.')

for tweet in tweets_marked:
   print(tweet[5])

# build list of marked status IDs
to_delete_ids = []
delete_count = 0

for tweet in tweets_marked:
   to_delete_ids.append(tweet[0])

# delete marked tweets by status ID
for status_id in to_delete_ids:
   try:
       api.destroy_status(status_id)
       print(status_id, 'deleted!')
       delete_count += 1
   except:
       print(status_id, 'could not be deleted.')

print(delete_count, 'tweets deleted.')