Dave Herman 🎵Dec 18, 2022
Darius Kazemi

In advance of deleting my Twitter account, I made this web page that lets you search my tweets, link to an archived version, and read whole threads I wrote.

https://tinysubversions.com/twitter-archive/

I will eventually release this as a website I host where you drop your Twitter zip archive in and it spits out the 100% static site you see here. Then you can just upload it somewhere and you have an archive that is also easy to style how you like it.

@tinysubversions Twitter archive

Dec 16, 2022 at 6:38amWeb
Show threadDarius KazemiDec 16, 2022

I tried to make sure that the link previews for pages look nice over here in fediverse-land. Hopefully this renders well??

https://tinysubversions.com/twitter-archive/tinysubversions/status/470670223901986816

Darius Kazemi on Twitter (archived)

We sort of par-grill the bacon and onions, not too much

Show threadDarius KazemiDec 16, 2022
Lol. Also... I think I'm... flirting with Maryland??
Show threadCasey KolderupDec 16, 2022
@darius is there a... mr. land
Show threadAmy HoyDec 16, 2022
@darius careful, it has crabs
Show threadandy pressmanDec 16, 2022
@darius watch out it has crabs
Show threadtrendlessDec 16, 2022
@darius 
Show threadPanic! At The MastoconDec 16, 2022
@darius bless you
Show threadPanic! At The MastoconDec 16, 2022
@darius @glitch_wolfe
Show threadAdam FieldsDec 16, 2022
@darius yes I want this please. Will happily beta test
Show threadAdam FieldsDec 16, 2022
@darius it would also be really nice if this could accept multiple mastodon post data dumps and archive them on the same timeline with deduping.
Show threadDarius KazemiDec 16, 2022
@fields I don't understand -- what does this have to do with Mastodon posts?
Show threadAdam FieldsDec 16, 2022
@darius Only that it would be very useful to have this for mastodon posts as well. Right now, when you move your account from one mastodon server to another, your posts don't come with you. It would be nice to be able to archive those in a similar way (and in the same place as the twitter archive).
Show threadmccDec 16, 2022

@darius I have an Interest in this although I'd probably prefer to run it offline myself.

Also I have daydreams about making my Twitter archive publicly available and putting my Mastodon archive in the same place. This would be especially useful if I ever manage to move off Mastodon.social

Show threadScot CloseDec 16, 2022
@mcc @darius Sir Tim Berners-Lee is involved with a technology called Inrupt that might be relevant.
Show threadDarius KazemiDec 16, 2022
@mcc well its a static site, it works great on localhost and possible even file:// though I haven't checked
Show threadMarco 🌳 ZoccaDec 16, 2022
@darius this is great! I saw something similar on github recently:
https://github.com/tweetback/tweetback
GitHub - tweetback/tweetback: Take ownership of your Twitter data and get your tweets back

Take ownership of your Twitter data and get your tweets back - tweetback/tweetback

GitHub
Show threadSam GavinDec 16, 2022
@darius this is the greatest thing I have ever seen and exactly what I was asking around about in a couple Discords earlier tonight. Lmk where I can send you money
Show threadAndy FraserDec 16, 2022
@darius fantastic idea and thank you for doing this.
Show threadRαhul BhαdαniDec 16, 2022
@darius you can also archive your Twitter on web.archive.org
Show threadDarius KazemiDec 16, 2022
@rahulbhadani How do you do that? Typically it won't grab your entire archive, just individual pages you tell it to save.
Show threadRαhul BhαdαniDec 16, 2022
@darius You can create an account on archive.org, and then go to account and before archiving, click on “save outlinks”. Without account sign in only a single page is archived. But of course web.archive.org won’t save your private messages but at least it will give you the latest snapshot of the public account to stay on its server as long as the server exists.
Show threadDarius KazemiDec 16, 2022
@rahulbhadani I don't think that would work to back up a person's whole public twitter... if you can link me to a working example I would appreciate it!
Show threadRαhul BhαdαniDec 16, 2022
@darius You can check @potus latest twitter snapshot to get the idea. http://web.archive.org/web/20221216050417/https://twitter.com/potus It even has a chrome/brave/chromium extension.
President Biden (@POTUS) / Twitter

46th President of the United States, husband to @FLOTUS, proud dad & pop. Tweets may be archived: https://t.co/HDhBZBkKpU Text me: (302) 404-0880

Twitter
Show threadDarius KazemiDec 16, 2022
@rahulbhadani That's not really working... it is a very incomplete archive.
Show threadRαhul BhαdαniDec 16, 2022
@darius I am not sure on how you have approached but it has been working great for me for many years in archiving snapshots of any webpage. You can try to play with it and should be able to figure out.
Show threadChris Silverman 🌻Dec 16, 2022
@darius this is absolutely amazing. I was looking at Tweetback, which also looks good, but that requires npm/eleventy, which I'm less familiar with. Looking forward to when/If you release this.
Show threadDarius KazemiDec 16, 2022
@csilverman yeah I wanted just a big zip file of flat files you could serve!
Show threadChris Silverman 🌻Dec 16, 2022
@darius curious, does it display a full list of tweets, like an archive, or do you have to search for something in particular?
Show threadDarius KazemiDec 16, 2022
@csilverman it doesn't. is there a good way to display hundreds of thousands of things for browsing? I feel like search is the best way to access this stuff but I'm open to suggestions
Show threadChris Silverman 🌻Dec 16, 2022

@darius The best approach I can think of would be something like a blog, where there's X number of tweets on the frontpage and pagination below that (personally I've never been a fan of the infinite scrolling approach).

Search is useful mainly for me, if I'm trying to find something I remember sharing, but my use case here is a preserved archive of posts that others can browse—again, like a microblog.

Show threadChris Silverman 🌻Dec 16, 2022
@darius Completely understand if that's not what your intention is with this, and I have no idea how hard that would be to build. Basically, I'm pretty close to leaving Twitter—or getting suspended, who even knows these days—and since my Twitter account was kind of an important aspect of my online presence, I wanted to preserve it in a form that's easy for other people to read. Maybe that's really more what Tweetback is for, though.
Show threadDarius KazemiDec 16, 2022
@csilverman yeah I think tweetback is more of a like "I want to turn my twitter into a blog" project, mine is really mostly for personal use along with the ability for me to link stuff I wrote in places like fediverse
Show threadAlexander CobleighDec 16, 2022
@darius fuck yes
Show threadJoanna Bryson, blatheringDec 16, 2022
@darius @1br0wn will we be able to read the threads you participated in? Twitter is transnational communication infrastructure, this is not the way to save our archive. We need federal action.
Show threadDarius KazemiDec 16, 2022
@j2bryson @1br0wn No, I purposefully chose not to archive my replies to things
Show threadColinDec 16, 2022
@darius I stopped tweeting in 2017, grabbed an archive, then deleted everything. I have such regret that my archive is in an old format, and I can’t use your (or other recent) tools to make proper archives including original media and non t.co links
Show thread@kernsDec 16, 2022
@darius nice. would be a great opportunity for tailwind css. Maybe you are using it, …haven’t looked yet.
Show threadDarius KazemiDec 16, 2022
@kerns I simply have a styles.css file that styles the HTML like it's 2002
Show threadmalcriada_lala_Dec 16, 2022
@darius is Twitter still functioning well enough to get a new file of our tweets out? I had heard that was broken?
Show threadDavidDec 16, 2022
@darius this is super cool. My twitter account is long gone but if it weren't I'd definitely want to use this
Show threadJocelynephiliac Dec 16, 2022
@darius my twitter archive zip is 3GB. You might better do it as a tool.
Show threadSteelerfan4lf3Dec 16, 2022
@darius that is pretty dope
Show threadDerek Powazek 🐐Dec 16, 2022
@darius OMG this is so needed. Thank you. If you want a beta tester, I'm here to help.
Show threadBrian MoonDec 16, 2022
@darius Definitely bookmarking this! Thank you!
Show threadDave Coustan (Extraface)Dec 16, 2022
@darius oh man thank you, I love this idea
Show threadGary Bunker Dec 16, 2022
@darius That's brilliant!
Show threadaddieDec 17, 2022
@darius I would love an easy way to host this myself
Show threadCranky DavidDec 17, 2022

@darius
cc: @sethcotlar @KevinMKruse @jbf1755

you might want to keep an eye on this tool ☝️- it may prove very useful for #histodons for archiving your twitter work.

Show threadAnarcho DoggoDec 17, 2022

@darius hell yeah, nice work. Was just chatting with organizers about wanting this exact thing for a variety of threatened antifascist research accounts. Pool all the archives together to make sure that info is not lost as accounts continue to be purged.

Tbh that model on a slightly larger scale for journalists, community organizers, researchers of all sorts... having a searchable static site version is just a huge win for maintainting these archives going forward.

Saving this post and definitely looking forward to checking out the source when you publish it; thanks again for sharing!

Show threadDarius KazemiDec 17, 2022
@AnarchoDoggo yeah there are a fair number of these but none of them were like... a big zip file of HTML files that you unzip on a web server. they're all like, framework this, github pages that, database blah blah
Show threadAnarcho DoggoDec 17, 2022
@darius what's backing the search piece?
Show threadDarius KazemiDec 17, 2022

@AnarchoDoggo http://elasticlunr.com/

it's an in-browser text search indexing thing

Elasticlunr.js, lightweight full-text search engine in Javascript for browser search and offline search.

Elasticlunr.js, lightweight full-text search engine in Javascript for browser search and offline search. Elasticlunr.js is developed based on Lunr.js, but more flexible than lunr.js. Elasticlunr.js provides Query-Time boosting and field search. A bit like Solr, but much smaller and not as bright, but also provide flexible configuration and query-time boosting.

Show threadAnarcho DoggoDec 17, 2022
@darius thanks! Sorry one other question, how did you go about dealing with shortened twitter urls for QTs, etc? Especially in case where original link is dead (because of account deletion / suspension), was there a way to utilize internet archive or something else to resurrect the content there?
Show threadDarius KazemiDec 17, 2022

@AnarchoDoggo QTs will look like this:

https://tinysubversions.com/twitter-archive/tinysubversions/status/789584846335074306

I leave it up to the user to either go to that link, or to see if wayback machine has it, etc. Otherwise I would be archiving other people's content and that is an ethical can of worms I do not want to open with this project since I cannot get people's consent for that

Darius Kazemi on Twitter (archived)

Good thread <a href='https://twitter.com/NoraReed/status/788940516888936448'>https://twitter.com/NoraReed/status/788940516888936448</a>

Show threadDarius KazemiDec 17, 2022
@AnarchoDoggo I do unfurl all t.co urls to their original url
Show threadAnarcho DoggoDec 17, 2022
@darius sweet, looking forward to seeing how you do this.
Show threadDarius KazemiDec 17, 2022
@AnarchoDoggo oh it's built in to the twitter archive itself. the text of the tweets contains the t.co but there is metadata for original URLs so I just find/replace