Twoot

Twoot is a python script that mirrors tweets from a twitter account to a Mastodon account. It is simple to set-up on a local machine, configurable and feature-rich.

UPDATE 22 NOV 2022 VERSION 2.4 Added command-line option (-u) to remove tracking parameters from URLs included in tweets. A tracking URL is a normal URL with additional parameters attached to it. These parameters are used by marketing companies to identify the source of a click and the effectiveness of a communication campaign.

Previous updates can be found in CHANGELOG.

Features

• Fetch timeline of given user from twitter.com (through nitter instance)
• Scrape html and format tweets for post on mastodon
• Emojis supported
• Upload images from tweet to Mastodon
• Optionally upload videos from tweet to Mastodon
• Specify maximum age of tweet to be considered
• Specify minimum delay before considering a tweet for upload
• Remember tweets already tooted to prevent double posting
• Optionally post reply-to tweets on the mastodon account
• Optionally ignore retweets
• Allows rate-limiting posts to Mastodon instance

usage

twoot.py [-h] -t <twitter account> -i <mastodon instance> -m <mastodon account>
                -p <mastodon password> [-r] [-s] [-u] [-v] [-a <max age in days)>]
                [-d <min delay (in mins)>] [-c <max # of toots to post>]

arguments

Assuming that the Twitter handle is @SuperDuperBot and the Mastodon account is @superduperbot@botsin.space

Switch	Description	Example	Req
-t	twitter account name without '@'	SuperDuper	Yes
-i	Mastodon instance domain name	botsin.space	Yes
-m	Mastodon username	superduperbot	Yes
-p	Mastodon password	my_Sup3r-S4f3*pw	Yes
-v	upload videos to Mastodon	N/A	No
-r	Post reply-to tweets (ignored by default)	N/A	No
-s	Skip retweets (posted by default)	N/A	No
-u	Remove trackers from URLs	N/A	No
-a	Max. age of tweet to post (in days)	5	No
-d	Min. age before posting new tweet (in minutes)	15	No
-c	Max number of toots allowed to post (cap)	1	No

When using the -v switch consider:

• whether the copyright of the content that you want to cross-post allows it
• the storage / transfer limitations of the Mastodon instance that you are posting to
• the upstream bandwidth that you may consume on your internet connection

Default max age is 1 day. Decimal values are OK.

Default min delay is 0 minutes.

No limitation is applied to the number of toots uploaded if -c is not specified.

installation

Make sure python3 is installed.

Twoot depends on beautifulsoup4 and Mastodon.py python modules.

Only If you plan to download videos with the -v switch, are the additional dependencies required:

• Python module youtube-dl2
• ffmpeg (installed with the package manager of your distribution)

pip install beautifulsoup4 Mastodon.py youtube-dl2

In your user folder, execute git clone https://gitlab.com/jeancf/twoot.git to clone repo with twoot.py script.

Add command line to crontab. For example, to run every 15 minutes starting at minute 1 of every hour and process the tweets posted in the last 5 days but at least 15 minutes ago:

1-59/15 * * * * /path/to/twoot.py -t SuperDuperBot -i botsin.space -m superduperbot -p my_Sup3r-S4f3*pw -a 5 -d 15

Examples

Twoot is known to be used for the following feeds (older first):

• @internetofshit@botsin.space
• @hackaday@botsin.space
• @todayilearned@botsin.space
• @moznews@noc.social
• @hackster_io@noc.social
• @cnxsoft@noc.social
• @unrealengine@noc.social
• @phoronix@noc.social
• @uanews@fed.celp.de

Background

I started twoot when tootbot stopped working. Tootbot relied on RSS feeds from https://twitrss.me that broke when Twitter refreshed their web UI in July 2019.