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 23 NOV 2022 VERSION 2.5 Added command-line option (-l) to remove redirection from links included in tweets. Obfuscated links are replaced by the URL that the resource is directly downloaded from. Also improved tracker removal by cleaning URL fragments as well (contrib: mathdatech, thanks!).

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	sd@example.com	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
-l	Remove link redirection	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

Notes

-l will follow every link included in the tweet and replace them with the url that the resource is directly dowmnloaded from (if applicable). e.g. bit.ly/xxyyyzz -> example.com Every link visit can take up to 5 sec (timeout) therefore this option will slow down tweet processing.

If you are interested by tracker removal (-u) you should also select redirection removal(-l) as trackers are often hidden behind the redirection of a short URL.

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.