enlist

tool to manage twitter blocks via lists

This is a simple script that can quietly run on your computer, or a spare EC2 instance somewhere. It watches lists you maintain in your Twitter account, and blocks users that you add to the lists. Additionally, it can block followers of the users you add too. The entire user interface is two private lists in your Twitter account.

How it works

Every user added to the chuds list gets blocked.

For every user added to the megachuds list:

• All their followers are blocked.
• Then they are too!

All quietly in the background, while obeying Twitter's API rate limits. Lists turn out to function as a great queue of users to block: as soon as they are blocked, they vanish from lists, making lists perfect for keeping this tool's state, even across runs.

Requirements

• just the twitter python library (pip install python-twitter)

Configuration

You'll need a config file named .twitter in your home directory, which looks like this:

[DEFAULT]
screen_name: (your screen name)
consumer_key: (your consumer key)
consumer_secret: (your consumer secret)
access_token_key: (your access token key)
access_token_secret: (your access token secret)

You can genereate consumer keys and access tokens for your account at https://apps.twitter.com/

Command line arguments

Defaults should be fine for most use, but available arguments are:

  --sleep SLEEP         interval to poll lists on (default 30)
  --chuds-list CHUDS_LIST
                        name of list of users to block (default 'chuds')
  --megachuds-list MEGACHUDS_LIST
                        name of list of users to block, along with followers (default 'megachuds')
  --verbose             enable debugging output

The script will create the lists for you the first time it runs, if they don't exist yet.