Tweet delete script using your Twitter archive as an index

archival-langoliers.rb

require "rubygems"
require "twitter"
require "json"
require "csv"
#require "date"

# things you must configure
TWITTER_USER = "your_twitter_username"
MAX_AGE_IN_DAYS = 7 # anything older than this is deleted

# get these from dev.twitter.com
CONSUMER_KEY = "your_consumer_key"
CONSUMER_SECRET = "your_consumer_secret"
OAUTH_TOKEN = "your_oauth_token"
OAUTH_TOKEN_SECRET = "your_oauth_secret"

# full path to your unzipped tweet archive -- a directory 
ARCHIVE_PATH = "/Users/your_computer_username/Downloads/some_long_cryptic_string"

# any special favorites?
IDS_TO_SAVE_FOREVER = [369855688836538368] # my panini tweet

# this flag is here so you can do a test run first
ACTUALLY_DELETE = false

### you shouldn't have to change anything below this line ###

MAX_AGE_IN_SECONDS = MAX_AGE_IN_DAYS*24*60*60
NOW_IN_SECONDS = Time.now

### A METHOD ###

def delete_from_twitter(tweet_id, client)
  if ACTUALLY_DELETE
    begin
      client.destroy_status(tweet_id)
    rescue StandardError => e
      puts e.inspect
      puts "Error deleting #{tweet_id}; exiting"
      exit
    else
      puts "Deleted #{tweet_id}"
    end
  end
end

### WE BEGIN ###

client = Twitter::REST::Client.new do |config|
  config.consumer_key        = CONSUMER_KEY
  config.consumer_secret     = CONSUMER_SECRET
  config.access_token        = OAUTH_TOKEN
  config.access_token_secret = OAUTH_TOKEN_SECRET
end

puts ""
puts "What's that sound...?"
puts ""

tweets = CSV.read(File.join(ARCHIVE_PATH, "tweets.csv"))[1 .. -1] # skip header row

tweets.each do |tweet|
  begin
    created_at = Time.parse(tweet[3])
    tweet_id = tweet[0].to_i
    tweet_age = NOW_IN_SECONDS - created_at
    tweet_age_in_days = (tweet_age/(24*60*60)).round
    if (tweet_age < MAX_AGE_IN_SECONDS) then
      puts "Ignored a tweet #{tweet_age_in_days} days old"
    elsif IDS_TO_SAVE_FOREVER.include?(tweet_id) then
      puts "Ignored a tweet that is to be saved forever"
    else
      if ACTUALLY_DELETE
        puts "Deleting a tweet #{tweet_age_in_days} days old"
        delete_from_twitter(tweet_id, client)
      else
        puts "Would have deleted a tweet #{tweet_age_in_days} days old"
      end
    end

    puts "  #{tweet[5]}" # tweet text
    puts ""

  rescue Twitter::Error::TooManyRequests => e
    puts "Hit the rate limit; pausing for #{e.rate_limit.reset_in} seconds"
    sleep e.rate_limit.reset_in
    retry

  rescue StandardError => e
    puts e.inspect
    exit
  end
end

It looks like this no longer will work - now from https://twitter.com/settings/your_twitter_data we get JS files, not CSV.