Social media is not my favourite ‘thing’ as you may already know!
It has its place and I have utilised various platforms to promote news, ideas and dialogue. I observe and absorb what others have to say, sharing whatever I feel worthy of such. Like you, I have done this for many years, for free and without censure.
Although I have tried various platforms, I have only really used Facebook and Twitter, for personal, business and volunteer purposes.
In recent years, I have stopped using Facebook altogether, suspending my account, during Lent and Advent. I started avoiding Facebook after saying way to much during the early days of ‘brexit’! I have admin access to various pages but this is no longer required either. I can say goodbye to Facebook.
Lately, I have found Twitter to be annoying, boring, and populated by double-standards and hypocrisy. Well, that’s my opinion, and is mostly related to the cult of celebrity that creeps into everything, even amongst groups of people that really should know better.
I manage multiple twitter accounts. My personal account has demonstrated that I follow more than I lead, which is ok but is representative of quantity over quality, imho! So often we consume ‘content’ as a habit that proves hard to redress.
So I have taken steps….
I was about to deactivate my account and walk away for a while. What I really wanted to do was to remove accounts I was following, that didn’t reciprocate, in bulk. This is not easy and there are no native Twitter tools to achieve it.
The most promising result I found from a search “unfollow Twitter all” was for a GitHub solution that required some comprehensive and in-depth engagement with the Linux command line and a Twitter developer account with elevated access! Hmmm.
As it happens, I am currently self-learning Linux with a foray into the world of Raspberry Pi. And, having a long and fairly reasonable experience with the Windows command process (CMD and PowerShell), I am genuinely interested in mastering Linux to a level that proves useful in my personal and business spheres. It’s my new hobby!
Using a shell app (Blink) from iPad to a Raspberry Pi box, I set about configuring the necessary services such as Ruby, T and Twurl. I configured a Twitter developer account, creating a new app and requesting elevated access.
Working with keys and commands requires focus and I made several errors. I resolved these and managed to authorise my app with Twitter. I can now remove all the Twitter accounts that hadn’t followed back, along with other ‘power’ config changes, directly from the command line.
I always prefer a well designed and developed UI solution, preferably from the app developer themselves. However, I felt sufficiently confident and competent to address my requirements using a full set of tools!
It might seem extreme, to be removing so many accounts in one action. I could have reviewed them individually, yet there were too many. I am also reducing a source of interesting reading and engagement. That’s my choice. I beleive that if someone really appreciates your support and interest then they can offer the same back to you.
Now, should I post this on Twitter…..?
The links below detail the steps taken.
This Lifehacker article details several methods to achieve bulk ‘unfollow’.
Command line fun with Ruby and T on GitHub. https://github.com/sferik/t
A workaround for challenging authorisation! https://github.com/sferik/twitter/issues/878
Read the manual https://developer.twitter.com/en/docs
Image from Unsplash, Brett Jordan