NUKE THEM ALL. Developer Ben Jackson made us a tool that nukes some, or all, of your shameful old tweets.
Ed note: This tutorial is for Mac users, and assumes a llliiiittttle bit of comfort with the Terminal. Use at your own risk — it might be worth running through the steps on a dummy account first, if you're nervous. Send any bugs to john.herrman@buzzfeed.com.
Now that Twitter has made it easy to download our entire tweet archives, the Internet is now faced with the scary reality that the dumbest things we've ever said are only a few clicks away. Our early tweets were sent from a time of innocence, joy, and freedom from the realization that one day other people (and we ourselves) might pass judgement on them.
But the time of reckoning has come. And if you're unable to bear the weight of your shame, this is your way out. Perhaps you had a particularly dark period after a break-up. Maybe your first six months on Twitter were just bad haikus. If you're the type of person who rips up your old shitty poems, this script is for you.
Important: this should be obvious, but to be sure there is no undo for this script. If you haven't seen Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, you might want to watch it first. Weigh your options carefully before erasing your past. (You will, of course, still have your local archive after deleting the public tweets.)
First, you'll have to set up a Twitter app on the developer portal and generate an OAuth key.
1. Visit the Twitter Developer Apps page and create a new app, filling out only the required fields.
2. Go to the "Settings" tab for your app, scroll down, and change "Application Type" to "Read and Write", then click "Update this Twitter application's settings".
3. Go to the "Details" tab, scroll down, and click "Create my access token" (or "Recreate my access token" if you already created one). When you refresh, you should see "Access Level: Read and Write" after your access token and secret.
