Benj EdwardsNov 6, 2022

The thought of potentially leaving Twitter is sad. I’ve seen a lot of people say “None or my tweets are worth saving” for them

But for me, I have quite a legacy there…it’s a living archive of personal events, achievements, friendships, photos, and some of my best ideas. A record of my career since 2009. Very hard to leave that behind

Show threadBenj EdwardsNov 6, 2022

It’s also sad to me to see so many people think poorly of their output on Twitter. It’s a record of your personal history, and I think that’s important

For example see comments on my article here:

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2022/10/how-to-download-a-backup-copy-of-your-twitter-data-or-deactivate-your-account/

How to download a backup copy of your Twitter data (or deactivate your account)

If you treasure your tweets, it’s easy to get a backup copy for your own safekeeping.

Ars Technica
Show threadPaolo AmorosoNov 6, 2022

@benjedwards For archival purposes it might be possible to put together some tooling to download the content of a Twitter profile and republish it as, say, a blog. Maybe via RSS or the APIs.

Someone may be willing to pay for such a service.

Show threadJustin
@amoroso @benjedwards I haven't dug to deep but I don't see any reason an archive couldn't just be hosted it is basically HTML JavaScript and JSON. If I had sometime I'd look into what it would take to "post" to an archive (naively) wondering if you could just write to new tweets JSON file.
Nov 6, 2022 at 12:44pmWeb
Show threadJustinNov 6, 2022
@amoroso @benjedwards No idea if there is any utility to it but it is possible to add "tweets" to the "tweets.js" JSON and have the display in the archive. Probably would want to build a different HTML wrapper because there's a lot in the archive download that people might not just want to be "open."
Show threadJustinNov 6, 2022
@amoroso @benjedwards Like DMs, the amount of data actually in the archive is quite expanded from the last time I dug into it.
Show threadJustinNov 6, 2022
@amoroso @benjedwards Seeing some indication that the JSON is just a Twitter API output so it might be possible to "Post" to that file w/the Twitter API. Taking a gander through GITHUB to see what tools/viewers folks have already been working on.
Show threadBenj EdwardsNov 6, 2022
@btj @amoroso this is a great idea. If I could host my Twitter archive publicly on vintagecomputing.com I might do it—adding to it would be a neat bonus
Show threadJustinNov 6, 2022
@benjedwards @amoroso Yeah kind of after the same thing. My initial look through GITHUB is that the existing tools are built for earlier iterations of the Twitter Archive format which seems to have changed subtly quite recently (possibly w/the edit introduction).