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How to delete your past tweets — in bulk and for free — and perhaps save your career

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Publishing is one of those industries, like advertising and other media sectors, that is more vocal and certainly more high profile than many other industries. We wouldn’t have it any other way. Publicity is our life blood.

But it comes with a warning. What was acceptable in the past may not always be acceptable now, or in the future. Whilst our past personal history used to be something that one could replace like a frayed coat, digital technology is starting to prevent the ’right to be forgotten’.

Nowhere is this more apparent than Twitter, that merciless platform which has snared dozens of celebrities, politicians, and sports professionals – and a few publishing industry execs.

So, as a publishing professional, can you delete your Twitter history?  Yes.

Here’s how:

Step 1: Create a personal backup of all your tweets

Twitter lets you easily export all of your past tweets into a convenient CSV file.

Navigate to Twitter’s “Your Twitter Data” section in their settings. Confirm your password and click “request data” at the bottom of the page. Here’s an example:

With any luck, you’ll be emailed a Zip file within ten minutes. Go on, make yourself a coffee, you know you want to.

Once you’ve received the Zip file, unzip the darn thing. One of the folders will say “Index.html” where you’ll happen upon a slick interface where you can scroll through your tweets by month and year.

Note that you’ll also need the tweets.csv file for the final step of this tutorial.

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Photo by Kristopher Roller on Unsplash