How can i delete all my tweets using twitter api

Question

I'm trying to delete all the tweets/replies from my account, at first it worked, but it got to a point where he stopped deleting, and he can't receive the tweets anymore, giving the error:

File "main.py", line 29, in fetch_tweets
     oldest = all_tweets[-1].id - 1
IndexError: list index out of range

and on my account, even if it doesn't appear on the profile (I don't know why) there are still 19.2k tweets to be deleted, does anyone have any idea how to fix this?

code:

'''
Script para apagar todos os meus tweets mais antigos que determinada data
'''
from keep_alive import keep_alive
import tweepy
from config import *
import datetime
import pandas as pd

client = tweepy.Client(bearer_token, api_key, api_secret, access_token, access_token_secret)

auth = tweepy.OAuth1UserHandler(api_key, api_secret, access_token, access_token_secret)
api = tweepy.API(auth)

def fetch_tweets(username):
  '''
  Baixa todos os tweets do usuário
  determinado em 'username'
  '''
  print("Resgatando Tweets. . .")
  all_tweets = []

  new_tweets = api.user_timeline(screen_name=username, tweet_mode='extended', count=200, exclude_replies=False)

  all_tweets.extend(new_tweets)

  # Salva o id do tweet antigo menos um
  oldest = all_tweets[-1].id - 1
  
  while len(new_tweets) > 0:   # Continua pegando tweets até a requisição retornar nada
      # Todos as requests posteriores usam max_id "para avançar no tempo"
      new_tweets = api.user_timeline(screen_name=username, tweet_mode='extended', count=200, max_id=oldest)

    
      all_tweets.extend(new_tweets)
    # Atualiza o id
      oldest = all_tweets[-1].id - 1

      
  # Transform the tweepy tweets into a 2D array that will populate the csv
  output = [ 
                [ tweet.id, 
                  tweet.created_at, 
                  tweet.created_at.strftime("%d-%m-%Y"), 
                  tweet.retweet_count,
                  tweet.favorite_count,
                  username ] for tweet in all_tweets
          ]

  for sublist in output:
    sublist.append(username)


  return output

def validate_date(date_text):
  '''
  Verifica se a data entrada pelo usuário
  está no foramto YYYY-MM-DD. Se não estiver,
  levanta uma exeção com mensagem de erro.
  '''

  try:
    datetime.datetime.strptime(date_text, '%Y-%m-%d')

  except ValueError:
    raise ValueError("A data não está no formato YYYY-MM-DD. Execute o programa novamente.")

def filter_tweets(start, tweets):
  '''
  Usa o dataframe com todos os tweets
  e a data de corte, depois da qual os
  tweets devem ser mantidos, para gerar
  uma lista com os ids das publicações
  devem ser removidas.
  '''

  print("Filtrando Tweets. . .")
  now = datetime.datetime.now()
  start_date = pd.to_datetime(start, format = "%Y-%m-%d")

  # Filtra intervalo de tweets que quero manter
  keep_dates = pd.date_range(start=start_date, end=now)
  keep_dates = [str(date)[:10] for date in keep_dates]

  # Cria uma lista de ids cujo tweet deve ser mantido
  tweets_to_delete = [ tweet[0] for tweet in tweets if str(pd.to_datetime(tweet[1]))[:10] not in keep_dates ]

  return tweets_to_delete


def delete_tweets(tweet_ids):

  '''
  Deleta os tweets cujos números
  identificadores estão na lista
  tweet_ids
  '''
  print("Deletando Tweets. . .")
  # Começa a deletar:
  delete_count = 0
  for tweet_id in tweet_ids:

      try:
          api.destroy_status(tweet_id)
          print(tweet_id, 'deletado!', delete_count)
          delete_count += 1

      except:
          print(tweet_id, 'não pode ser deletado!')

  print('Pronto!', delete_count, 'tweets foram deletados, ao todo.')


##########################
### Execução principal ###
##########################

def main():
  print("Iniciando. . .")
  
  username = "xxxxxxxxxx"

  start = "2022-10-25"

  while True:
    try:
      tweets = fetch_tweets(username)
      tweets = filter_tweets(start, tweets)
      delete_tweets(tweets)
    except tweepy.TweepyException as e
      try:
        print(e)  
      except: 
        print("error")

keep_alive()
main()

I already tried to change the parameters, put a conditional to check if the list is empty, but none of that worked

Answer 1

The API can only go back so far in retrieving older Tweets.

Another option would be to request your Twitter Archive, which would contain the Tweet IDs and content - you can then potentially use the API to delete Tweets by ID.

Note that there are account and API rate limits that will restrict the speed at which you can run this operation.