Twitter archive for a deceased friend

November 16, 2022 11:29 AM

In July, my friend unexpectedly died. This year, it seems that Twitter will die rather... expectedly. The literary circle we were both parts of wishes to preserve our friend's Twitter account, as a kind of record of the virtual round table her account was over the last four or five years. How can we do this in absence of a probated will or with an as-yet unconfirmed-by-the-court literary executor?

It is very easy to download one's Twitter data at the moment. It is very difficult to download someone else's Twitter data, living or dead (as it should be). I have heard tell of Twitter "Researcher" accounts. Does anyone else have any experience with this sort of process, downloading a dead user's data, specifically with Twitter? We'd like to have it done before the new owner fires the people who can help with this or, God forbid, before the failwhale becomes permanent.

posted by infinitewindow to Computers & Internet (12 answers total)

Just starting with the most simple level -- and as someone whose best friend died, so I dealt with this sort of thing for her: Does anybody in your group have access to your friend's phone/laptop/etc.? If not, is anybody in your group close enough to your friend's spouse/child/relative who might grant access to those devices, do you can impersonate your friend to get the data (potentially being able to get through two-factor authentication because you have device access)? That would be the easiest way.
posted by BlahLaLa at 11:35 AM on November 16, 2022 [2 favorites]

As a data point I'm not sure it's still "very easy" to download one's Twitter data, I put in a request Sunday and haven't heard back. I suspect that system is very overloaded or was completely disabled by Elon's meddling.

If you don't want to write code to try and scrape the data yourself, your best bet is to use one of the paid social media archiving services. For example FollowersAnalysis appears to support this, although I only found that page via a public search and am not endorsing that particular service. If you want this to actually work you probably want to start this process ASAP before the site breaks more
posted by JZig at 12:36 PM on November 16, 2022 [2 favorites]

Response by poster: We do not have access to her devices—neither her Windows 11 laptop with Microsoft PIN-secured account, nor her multiple iCloud accounts with Twitter credentials—so 2FA is also impossible. Impersonation is risky at best considering she has been publicly mourned for months.
posted by infinitewindow at 12:36 PM on November 16, 2022

I'm so sorry for your loss. Just as a data point, I just downloaded my twitter archive last night and they made me re-enter the password to make the download start even though I was already logged in. So even if you had had access to a device that was still logged in somewhere, you wouldn't have been able to download without the password anyway. I'm sorry I don't have any other ideas. I'll be following this thread.
posted by Nickel at 1:01 PM on November 16, 2022 [1 favorite]

This article recommends an app called All My Tweets.
posted by pinochiette at 2:06 PM on November 16, 2022 [1 favorite]

I'm very sorry for your loss.

By total coincidence, I just saw Wolfie Christl on the fediverse recommend this Python command-line app for printing a (public) Twitter presence to PDF. If you have a Pythonista around, maybe worth a try?
posted by humbug at 2:19 PM on November 16, 2022 [2 favorites]

Recently asked here not that there were any amazingly useful answers I'm afraid. But it did remind me that even if you find an easy solution, or write your own code, you're limited to retrieving the user's most recent 3200 tweets.
posted by fabius at 5:14 AM on November 17, 2022 [1 favorite]

This article seems to suggest that you might be able to use the Wayback Machine (Internet Archive) to retrieve at least some of the old tweets.
posted by kristi at 10:57 AM on November 17, 2022 [1 favorite]

Best answer: memailed you
posted by BungaDunga at 5:19 PM on November 17, 2022 [1 favorite]

Also, a comment in the latest Twitter thread mentions a Python tool, twint, that might be able to help.
posted by kristi at 8:08 AM on November 18, 2022 [1 favorite]

Best answer: ... and a later comment has a link to an emergency scraper written by MeFite roywig.

If you have the time to keep an eye on the Twitter threads, you might keep finding more tools.
posted by kristi at 8:10 AM on November 18, 2022 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: Molto grazie, BungaDunga and kristi!
posted by infinitewindow at 12:36 PM on November 22, 2022