TwitToMast

Bypass paywalled APIs to crosspost from Twitter to Mastodon

Installation:

1. Clone the repo and set up the script's dependencies

git clone https://github.com/pogmom/TwitToMast.git
cd TwitToMast
npm install

2. Install Chrome Webdriver and set up your PATH as outlined in Step 3 here

3. Retrieve your Mastodon API Key

   • From your Mastodon Account, go to Preferences > Development > New Application
   • Enter any name you'd like, press "submit"
   • You should see the application with the name you just gave it in your applications list
   • Click on its name, and copy the string of text to the right of where it says "Your Access Token"

4. Update config.txt with your Mastodon account settings

   • Replace "API_KEY" on line 1 with the Access Token you retrieved in the previous step
   • Replace "API_URL" on line 2 with your Mastodon instance's API URL
     • This will look like "https://mastodon.social/api/v1/", replacing "mastodon.social" with the domain you registered your account through

Usage

node ./TwitToMast.js [-htqrpmbc] [-u username] [-n tweetcount] [-d debuglevel] [-w timeout]
node ./multi.js [-htqrpmbc] [-n tweetcount] [-d debuglevel] [-w timeout]

Arguments

	-h:	- show help screen (you made it here!)
	-u: username
		- the twitter handle of the user whose account will be scraped
			- defaults to 'Twitter' (@twitter)
	-n: tweetcount
		- the number of enabled tweets that will be scraped from the targeted account
			- defaults to 5
	-t:	- tweets that are part of threads will be included in the scan
	-q:	- quote tweets will be included in the scan
	-r:	- Link to quoted tweet will appear in the header, preceded by "re: "
			- default behavior posts link at bottom preceded by "Quoting "
	-p:	- enable/disable posting to Mastodon
	-m:	- include user's name, handle, and link to tweet
	-b:	- display browser (disable headless mode)
	-c:	- force URL to be logged to file if posts are disabled
	-d: debuglevel
		- amount of information to print to console
			0: only errors
			1: current task + tweet Text (default)
			2: pretty much everything
	-w: timeout
		- length of time (in ms) to wait for page elements to load
			- defaults to 30000 (30 seconds)

Example of single-user scraper

Example of multi-user scraper

How types of content are handled

• Text
  • All text (except emojis) is currently included in cross-posts
• Quote Tweets
  • Preserves text of quote tweet and allows
• Media
  • All still images attached to a tweet will be included in cross-posts
  • Videos are unable to be attached to cross-posts, but a link to the original video will be included
• Retweets
  • Retweets are not cross-posted
• Replies
  • To self:
    • Preserves Text, links, still images, quoted content, and continuity (mastodon post are stitched together in threads)
  • To others:
    • Replies to others are not cross-posted at the moment

Q&A

Q. why isn't it staying open in the background to monitor my tweets?

A. TwitToMast doesn't run perpetually by default. You'll need to set it up yourself to run on a schedule.

• On macos, you can run the script every 10 minutes with the following command in an automator app set up to run at login.
  • zsh -c "cd /path/to/repository/TwitToMast && exec screen -DmS twittercrosspost zsh -c 'while true; do /path/to/node ./TwitToMast.js [username] [tweet count] [debug level] & sleep 600; done'"
  • You can connect to the created screen to monitor the output of the script with screen -ls and screen -r [screenid]
• Windows users, try this
• If you're on linux, you probably already know what you're doing

Q. Doesn't bypassing Twitter's API violate their TOS?

A. No, elon musk personally gave me the go-ahead to do this.