Twitter/X un-deleted all my replies and retweets.
December 11, 2023 12:29 PM Subscribe
I wiped my twitter post history a few months ago. Last week it is repopulated with some old retweets and replies. Am I the only one? What happened?
A few months ago, my partner and I both used a browser script to delete all of our tweets. It worked just fine, and my feed was nice and empty. Neither of us wanted to totally nuke our accounts - we wanted to keep following people who hadn't migrated elsewhere. The only thing left in my tweet history was a note saying my feed was purged and where else to find me.
But this week she noticed that her replies and retweets had returned from the grave. Mine had as well. Some are from the summer. Then there's a big gap and a bunch of retweets from 2021 and earlier.
I know this is probably some hiccup from a server rack Elon's cousins shoved into a trailer and drove across the county that never got the message that those tweets should be deleted. But I'm still concerned that zombie tweets are trickling back. I'm also concerned that this happened to both my partner and myself, but I can't find anyone else posting about it online.
Is this a known issue? Is there any solution other than deleting everything again and keeping an eye out for the tweets to resurface again or wiping my whole account?
A few months ago, my partner and I both used a browser script to delete all of our tweets. It worked just fine, and my feed was nice and empty. Neither of us wanted to totally nuke our accounts - we wanted to keep following people who hadn't migrated elsewhere. The only thing left in my tweet history was a note saying my feed was purged and where else to find me.
But this week she noticed that her replies and retweets had returned from the grave. Mine had as well. Some are from the summer. Then there's a big gap and a bunch of retweets from 2021 and earlier.
I know this is probably some hiccup from a server rack Elon's cousins shoved into a trailer and drove across the county that never got the message that those tweets should be deleted. But I'm still concerned that zombie tweets are trickling back. I'm also concerned that this happened to both my partner and myself, but I can't find anyone else posting about it online.
Is this a known issue? Is there any solution other than deleting everything again and keeping an eye out for the tweets to resurface again or wiping my whole account?
Did you use a version that actually matched your tweets against your full downloaded history? My understanding is that things like TweetDelete can actually reach only a maximum number of tweets/maximum time period going back, unless you feed it your entire Twitter history file. That wasn't supposed to be a problem because those very old tweets weren't displayable, either, but....*gestures*
posted by praemunire at 1:39 PM on December 11, 2023
posted by praemunire at 1:39 PM on December 11, 2023
Best answer: This is a frequently observed problem that comes back again and again. It probably is a symptom of Twitter's having fired most of its technical staff and Musk's contempt for decency or the law. There is no clear solution.
You might want to try making your Twitter account protected. Musk or a system failure might undo that too but it's at least something different. I think deleting your account entirely might also be another path but that comes with drawbacks. Someone else will register your name (unless you beat them to it).
Note that the Wayback Machine has copies of your old tweets. I don't know of any way of removing those.
posted by Nelson at 2:58 PM on December 11, 2023 [13 favorites]
You might want to try making your Twitter account protected. Musk or a system failure might undo that too but it's at least something different. I think deleting your account entirely might also be another path but that comes with drawbacks. Someone else will register your name (unless you beat them to it).
Note that the Wayback Machine has copies of your old tweets. I don't know of any way of removing those.
posted by Nelson at 2:58 PM on December 11, 2023 [13 favorites]
You can request removal from the Wayback Machine. I don’t know how well it works for social media.
posted by warriorqueen at 3:19 PM on December 11, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by warriorqueen at 3:19 PM on December 11, 2023 [1 favorite]
Twitter like many social media sites, store their data using Google's BigData a cloud infrastructure which is optimised for speed first and data integrity a distant third at best. Deletes can take up to a week to be permanently completed, in the meantime the client may filter them from view so they appear to be gone much faster.
In your case, I would delete everything again and wait 8 days to see how much is left then.
posted by Lanark at 3:19 PM on December 11, 2023
In your case, I would delete everything again and wait 8 days to see how much is left then.
posted by Lanark at 3:19 PM on December 11, 2023
Response by poster: I originally used this script via my browser's console to delete everything. It looks like the author recently added a from_archive option to help with the purge. It cross references your downloaded twitter archive and purges everything found therein.
posted by thecjm at 5:04 PM on December 11, 2023
posted by thecjm at 5:04 PM on December 11, 2023
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What exactly happened? Who knows! My guess would be that some part of Twitter broke really badly, and nobody knew how to fix it, so they restored that thing from a backup that also had some of your deleted tweets on it.
posted by rockindata at 12:59 PM on December 11, 2023 [24 favorites]