Some old tweets will remain accessible through the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine, and if anyone took a screenshot they’ll always be able to share that copy at any point in the future. Keep in mind that although these tweets will be removed from Twitter, that doesn’t mean they’re gone from the internet forever. The developer, Micah Lee, has a more detailed breakdown of each option. Once everything is imported, you can also head to Dashboard and manually save any other tweets before the deletion process starts.Īfter you’ve set the rules, Semiphemeral runs in the background, clearing out old tweets automatically.I like anywhere between 30 days and three months. Set the rules for whatever you’re comfortable with. Here, you can set up rules to delete tweets older than a certain number of days or to avoid deleting tweets that meet certain conditions, such as a specific amount of retweets or likes. Semiphemeral takes some time to go through your tweets.Click Log in with Twitter and authorize the app. Semiphemeral also includes an option to download tweets, but there’s no reason not to take the official route. This isn’t required, but if you’re worried about losing all of your brilliant tweets, this way you have a local backup of them. After using a few, I’ve found that Semiphemeral is the best option. Twitter doesn’t have any sort of tool to bulk-delete tweets, but plenty of third-party services do. Or maybe your Twitter account was hacked to shill crypto, and you’re just looking for a way to quickly delete a few thousand nonsensical tweets about fake money after getting your account back. Past tweets might also include seemingly insignificant details about you that other parties can use for phishing, such as your birthday, what operating systems you use, or what apps you prefer. And it doesn’t matter whether you’re in the public eye or not, as companies may use social media background checks as part of the hiring process and keep an eye on you even after you’re employed. For one, it’s easy for other people to pull an old and poorly aged tweet out of context (which everyone has seen happen plenty of times). Privacy tools can make it easier to treat Twitter more like Snapchat: a dumping ground for fleeting thoughts that don’t need to be codified into the public record.ĭeleting old tweets makes sense for practical reasons, too. If Twitter is supposed to be a town square as some would argue, then a permanent record of everything most people say or do isn’t needed, just as a permanent record of the conversations people have in coffee shops or at bars isn’t needed. Not just the bad, dumb, or ignorant ones. Whether you’re a recent college graduate looking for a new job or you’re just a person who’s been online for too long, there’s a strong case to be made to delete your tweets.