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.

15/02/2023 VERSION 3.2 Added mitigation for Mastodon API error 422, 'Unprocessable Entity', 'Cannot attach files that have not finished processing. Try again in a moment!' reported on some instances when posting toots with video.

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
• Optionally remove redirections (e.g. reveal destination of short URLs)
• Optionally remove trackers (UTM parameters) from URLs
• Optional domain substitution for Twitter, Youtube and Reddit domains (e.g. Nitter, Invidious and teddit respectively)
• Optional footer line to add tags at bottom of toot
• Allows rate-limiting posts to Mastodon instance

Usage

twoot.py [-h] [-f <.toml config file>] [-t <twitter account>] [-i <mastodon instance>]
         [-m <mastodon account>] [-p <mastodon password>] [-r] [-s] [-l] [-u] [-v] [-o]
         [-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 sd@example.com on instance masto.space:

Switch	Description	Example	Required
-f	path of .toml file with configuration	SuperDuper.toml	No
-t	twitter account name without '@'	SuperDuper	If no config file
-i	Mastodon instance domain name	masto.space	If no config file
-m	Mastodon username	sd@example.com	If no config file
-p	Mastodon password	my_Sup3r-S4f3*pw	Once at first run
-v	Upload videos to Mastodon	N/A	No
-o	Do not add "Original tweet" line	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 redirections	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

Password

A password must be provided for the first run only. Once twoot has connected successfully to the Mastodon host, an access token is saved in a .secret file named after the mastodon account, and a password is no longer necessary (command-line switch -p is not longer required).

Config file

A default.toml file is provided to be used as template. If -f is used to specify a config file to use, all the other command-line parameters are ignored, except -p (password) if provided.

Removing redirected links

-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 as trackers are often hidden behind the redirection of a short URL.

Uploading videos

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

Rate control

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. Additionally, if you are using a version of python < 3.11 you also need to install the tomli module.

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 SuperDuper -i masto.space -m sd@example.com -p my_Sup3r-S4f3*pw -a 5 -d 15

Featured Accounts

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

• @todayilearned@noc.social
• @moznews@noc.social
• @hackster_io@noc.social
• @cnxsoft@noc.social
• @unrealengine@noc.social
• @phoronix@noc.social
• @uanews@fed.celp.de
• @theregister@geeknews.chat
• @arstechnica@geeknews.chat
• @slashdot@geeknews.chat

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.