twitter-unfollow
My goal for the next months is to spend less time on social media and more time creating. Instead of reacting to things, I want to focus on having a bigger vision, planning things ahead and doing what has the highest impact.
I've been reading every single tweet in my timeline for the last 4 years with no interruption.
In total I have over 100 custom mute filters, including custom regexes like
(@United|delta|Delta|JetBlue|jetblue)
), and muted clients like BufferIt's time for me to stop reading so much on social media portals, and focus on reading books instead.
I'll still follow a small amount of people via Twitter lists, since there are certain things I really don't want to miss
View full blog post on my Twitter setup
This script does the following:
- Unfollow everybody
- Puts them into a list called "Old Follows"
- Store the usernames of everyone in
unfollowed_usernames.txt
(this allows you to pretty easily follow everyone again when you feel like it) - Store the usernames, together with full name and bio into
unfollowed_full_names.txt
(this allows you to search for users)
bundle install
bundle exec ruby unfollow.rb
Notes:
- Make sure to have DMs open to still be able to chat with your friends.
- Use a list to follow a small subset of people. This way you follow 0 people and nobody feels left out. The list can be private.
- Make sure to create a list called "Old Follows"
Technical Notes
- Create your application via Twitter Apps
- Set the following environment variables
ENV["CONSUMER_KEY"]
ENV["CONSUMER_SECRET"]
ENV["ACCESS_TOKEN"]
ENV["ACCESS_TOKEN_SECRET"]
- Due to the API limits this script can only unfollow about 420 people per run. You'll need to regenerate keys after this
๐คทโโ๏ธ