Ask HN: How would you improve this bash oneliner for deleting tweets?

#1

Post by jamiehall » Thu, Mar 26, 2020, 12:16 AM UTC

Many people use tweet deletion services, which periodically remove everything from their Twitter timeline; I wondered if it could be done from a Bash command line.

I wrote up my experiences as an explainer for nontechnical people: https://jamiehall.cc/2020/03/10/delete-all-your-tweets-with-...

TL;DR, here is the oneliner I've been using:

  $ twurl "/1.1/statuses/user_timeline.json?screen_name=YOUR_TWITTER_HANDLE&count=200
    &max_id=$(
      twurl '/1.1/statuses/user_timeline.json?screen_name=YOUR_TWITTER_HANDLE&count=200&include_rts=1'
     | jq -c -r '.[] | .id_str' | head -10 | tail -1)
    &include_rts=1"
   | jq -c -r '.[] | .id_str' 
   | parallel -j 10 -a - twurl -X POST /1.1/statuses/destroy/{1}.json
   > /dev/null

[Edit: I've put line breaks in there to make it more legible.]

I'm curious if it's possible to do better. In particular: could this be more elegant? Is it possible to do it using common built-ins, instead of twurl and jq?

Any suggestions or improvements would be very welcome!

Re: Ask HN: How would you improve this bash oneliner for deleting tweets?

#2

Post by toomuchtodo » Thu, Mar 26, 2020, 12:56 AM UTC

You might consider putting this in a GitHub Gist, sharing the link for it, and accept comments and improvements within the Gist comments functionality.

This would also allow others to fork your code to improve upon or keep a copy for themselves.

Re: Ask HN: How would you improve this bash oneliner for deleting tweets?

#3

Post by mirimir » Thu, Mar 26, 2020, 12:58 AM UTC

Not a Twitter user here, but would this delete retweets by others of your tweets?

Those might include tweets that you'd most want to delete. As well as ones that you'd most want to retain, for that matter.

Re: Ask HN: How would you improve this bash oneliner for deleting tweets?

#4

Post by jamiehall » Thu, Mar 26, 2020, 1:19 AM UTC

mirimir wrote: post #3

Not a Twitter user here, but would this delete retweets by others of your tweets? Those might include tweets that you'd most want to delete. As well as ones that you'd most want to retain, for that matter.

Yes, it takes care of that; if someone has retweeted you with a comment, the thing they're commenting on is replaced with "This tweet is no longer available." (Obviously, it's no defence against people screenshotting your tweet, manually copy-pasting what you said, etc etc.)

Re: Ask HN: How would you improve this bash oneliner for deleting tweets?

#5

Post by jamiehall » Thu, Mar 26, 2020, 1:19 AM UTC

toomuchtodo wrote: post #2

You might consider putting this in a GitHub Gist, sharing the link for it, and accept comments and improvements within the Gist comments functionality. This would also allow others to fork your code to improve upon or keep a copy for themselves.

Great idea, thanks! https://gist.github.com/nerdcha/3e811ef28d04561f73337e46267a...

Re: Ask HN: How would you improve this bash oneliner for deleting tweets?

#6

Post by viraptor » Thu, Mar 26, 2020, 1:21 AM UTC

I don't think there's a good reason to calculate the max_id every time. If you want to delete all tweets, you could skip it.

Re: Ask HN: How would you improve this bash oneliner for deleting tweets?

#7

Post by staktrace » Thu, Mar 26, 2020, 1:26 AM UTC

You could improve it by making it not a one-liner! Usually making it a multiple-liner can improve readability. And unless you're typing it into the command line directly everytime you run it (as opposed to putting it in a file that you invoke) it doesn't really matter how many lines it has.

Re: Ask HN: How would you improve this bash oneliner for deleting tweets?

#8

Post by peterleeq » Thu, Mar 26, 2020, 1:36 AM UTC

aint knw

Re: Ask HN: How would you improve this bash oneliner for deleting tweets?

#9

Post by peterleeq » Thu, Mar 26, 2020, 1:37 AM UTC

jamiehall wrote: post #4

mirimir wrote: post #3

Not a Twitter user here, but would this delete retweets by others of your tweets? Those might include tweets that you'd most want to delete. As well as ones that you'd most want to retain, for that matter.

Yes, it takes care of that; if someone has retweeted you with a comment, the thing they're commenting on is replaced with "This tweet is no longer available." (Obviously, it's no defence against people screenshotting your tweet, manually copy-pasting what you said, etc etc.)

alright

Re: Ask HN: How would you improve this bash oneliner for deleting tweets?

#10

Post by peterleeq » Thu, Mar 26, 2020, 1:37 AM UTC

jamiehall wrote: post #4

mirimir wrote: post #3

Not a Twitter user here, but would this delete retweets by others of your tweets? Those might include tweets that you'd most want to delete. As well as ones that you'd most want to retain, for that matter.

Yes, it takes care of that; if someone has retweeted you with a comment, the thing they're commenting on is replaced with "This tweet is no longer available." (Obviously, it's no defence against people screenshotting your tweet, manually copy-pasting what you said, etc etc.)

ok