Mastodon: Ability to delete all toots

[Cassolotl]

I was whinging about not being able to delete my account on Mastodon just now (#109), and now that I think about it, I would probably prefer to delete a bunch of stuff from my account, but leave it up with a redirection notice.

So what I'd like is, a page in the settings called "data control" or something way better than that. And the following options:

• Delete all toots (including boosts)
• Delete all boosts
• Delete all follows
• Kick all followers
• Delete all saves
• Delete all media
• Delete entire account

(I guess "delete all media" would leave messy image-not-found things, so that could be awful - I just put it in there because I thought it would be a cool option, if implemented well.)

And then, if I wanted to move to a new account but leave the old account up, I could delete all my toots, delete all my follows, and put a note in my bio: moved to @[email protected].

~

It's been mentioned in other discussions that there may be bad instances that ignore the request to delete toots/data from other instances. That is not a reason to withhold the ability to delete ANY data, in my opinion.

There are also laws in (at least) the EU about data protection and the right to be forgotten. I believe that users should be able to delete data easily without having to delete their entire account.

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• [Yes] I searched or browsed the repo’s other issues to ensure this is not a duplicate.
• [N/A] This bug happens on a tagged release and not on master (If you're a user, don't worry about this).

[andy-twosticks]

I think your reasoning on-site about why you wanted this was cogent --- if I understood correctly, it was (1) so that you could leave a signpost on your old instance to point to the new one, and (2) to prevent someone else taking that account and your followers suddenly getting toots from a different person.

Those are two excellent reasons, and I think we need this simple change at least until we solve these problems in a more organized way.

[Cassolotl]

Thanks! I imagine there are other use cases too, but those are some things that came up in the discussion. Another is, I once tried to delete all my tweets from Twitter because the care company providing my support were looking on my social networks to find evidence that I was less disabled than I was, and that creeped me out enough that I wanted to delete everything, but continue to post publicly (being more selectively about what I posted) from then on, under the same username. There are a lot of reasons why someone should be free to delete all their toots without deleting their account, I think!

[andy-twosticks]

Eurgh. That's why I have a very different identity on social media. I try to make sure the two IDs don't meet...

[matyapiro31]

You can do it with API just a short code.

[andy-twosticks]

@matyapiro31 -- you certainly can. And I'm sure I could work out how, too. But not everyone has that particular skill.

That's why we have a user interface at all, is it not? Why have the ability to post toots at all --- when you can do it from the API?

[AirDur]

For delete account, it's in work : https://github.com/tootsuite/mastodon/pull/3728

[nolanlawson]

Yup "delete entire account" is supported as of 1.4.3.

[Cassolotl]

I was asking for more than just "delete account" - even the title says "delete all toots" and doesn't mention deleting the account! Can this be reopened please? :)

[nolanlawson]

Oh I see, you want to leave the account open but delete all content and then create a redirection notice.

[Cassolotl]

Yes, and variations thereupon. :) Thanks for reopening!

[KEINOS]

Since my BOT tooted bunch of toots by mistake and start over, I need this "Deleting all content but leaving the account open" feature too, so to cast no dirt into the well that gives me water.

To delete all toots, currently do I have to delete my account and re-create?

The thing is that, meanwhile, as @matyapiro31 said earlier, "_You can do it with API just a short code._", I tried to delete my toots recursively _via API_ but couldn't get all the Toot IDs (Status IDs) for deletion.

What I did was simple as below:

1. GET Toot IDs from /api/v1/timelines/home endpoint.

> `curl -X GET --header 'Authorization: Bearer <ACCESS_TOKEN>' -sS https://sample.com/api/v1/timelines/home`

1. DELETE toots at /api/v1/statuses endpoint with Toot IDs that I got.

> `curl -X DELETE --header 'Authorization: Bearer <ACCESS_TOKEN>' -sS https:​//​sample.com​​/api​/v1​/statuses​/<Toot ID>`

1. Loop 2 then 1.

After the loop, it seemed work deleting them all, and no messages were on the home timeline.

But still, on my profile page, a lot of toots were there. Toots that are NOT on my home timeline.

I tried to get Toot IDs from the .atom feed also, but it didn't help. (Seems that ATOM feed's toot are only currently mentioned ones)

I searched the API document but it seems that there's no endpoint that I can get a list of all the toots of my account. Am I missing something?

[crakaC]

GET /api/v1/accounts/:id/statuses can get all toots.

[kensanata]

The Mastodon Archive tool can expire toots, maybe others as well. You basically need to "archive" your toots, then "expire" them, and then you can delete the archive I guess.

[KEINOS]

@crakaC

GET /api/v1/accounts/:id/statuses can get all toots.

At first, it didn't work either but recently I tried again and worked. Thanks!

There were 2 reasons for the previous failure.

1. There's a limitation on the number of times to request.(300 request/ 5 min = 1 request/sec)
2. By default w/ GET /api/v1/accounts/:id_use/statuses I get only the latest 20 toots' info, and I requested with the wrong toot(status) ID to get the whole list.

Therefore, it seems that I needed more patient to delete them all since it can delete 86,400 toots /day.

I made a simple PHP script to delete them all and run to test it. So far it's working and by calculation, it'll take 4 and a half days to go to finish...