Twitter Blocker
With the changes to Twitter's API, all the old tools to let you block/mute everyone on a list of people have broken. I've written a script to partially re-create the functionality.
Likes are private now, so the only things this script can do are to block or mute everyone who retweeted a partcular tweet, everyone who follows a certain account
If you have a user script manager like Tampermonkey, Reddit user cgmodeler provides a version (that I have not tested) here. Otherwise:
First, press the appropriate button to copy the script to your clipboard.
Then go to Twitter and pull up the list of people who retweeted the tweet or who follow the account in question. (If you're on a phone, you will need to do this in your web browser, not the Twitter app.)
Followers can be found by clicking on "followers" on that person's profile. For retweets, open the post engagements by clicking the three dots in the top right corner and "view post engagements", then click over to the "reposts" tab.
Go to the URL bar and type "javacript:", paste the text from your clipboard, and press enter. It takes 0.5-2 seconds per account (depends on your internet speed), so it may take a few minutes if there are a lot of accounts. Unfortunately Twitter is designed in a weird way that makes the script stop working if you leave the tab, so you'll need to stay there while it runs. (You can however go to a different window on a desktop computer and it will continue running in the background window.) Twitter also sometimes limits the number of retweets that are shown; there's nothing I can do about that unfortunately, so it may not block every retweeter if it was a very popular tweet.
This script is a bit finicky, so it sometimes doesn't work. If you're having trouble with it, please try the following:
- If it doesn't do anything at all, that's probably because your browser has disabled Javascipt from the URL bar. Instead, open the Javascript console and paste it there. This can generally be accessed by right-clicking anywhere on the page and selecting "inspect" or "inspect element", then selecting "console". Or just Google "open Javascript console in [my browser]" to find specific instructions.
- Run the script in a different browser or on a different device.
- If your language on Twitter is set to a language other than English, try changing it to English temporarily to run the script.
If none of these steps resolve the problem, it's probably because Twitter changed their interface again and broke my script. If his has happened, please leave a comment or contact me in some other way and I'll try to fix it.
PS: As a computer security nerd, I feel the need to point out that blindly copying scripts from unknown people on the internet and running them on your device is generally not a good idea. If I wanted to, for example, I could have included a line in the script that gives me access to your Twitter account. I haven't done that because I'm not evil, but you should be aware that it's a thing that's possible. Only run scripts from trusted sources.
