How to Lock Yourself Out of Your Twitter Account Without Deactivating It

Originally published

I really wasn’t going to write another, “I’m leaving Twitter/X,” post. I was going to quiet quit. I think announcements that you’re leaving a thing are mostly self aggrandizing, as if life won’t possibly go on once you’re gone.

It feels weird to say that about a platform that I’ve been on for 17 years, 8 months and 5 days. That’s over 45% of my life, after all.

But I’ve greatly disliked Twitter for a long time — even before Elon bought it and renamed it X. I think most social networks straddle this weird middle ground between parasocial and reciprocal relationships, and that’s more unhealthy than healthy.

But that’s neither here nor there. The main reason I’m leaving Twitter is that the posts I made get very little visibility, and I’m aggravated by it most of the time.

It’s an incredible time suck, and I see things I don’t care to see, despite spending 17 years, 8 months and 5 days carefully curating my muted words, follow lists, and block words.

So I’m jumping ship for Bluesky, which currently has the winning combination of enough people I care to interact with + no algorithm. I only see the people and topics I follow, and that’s swell.

Still, I would rather not deactivate my account for 2 reasons:

  1. I don’t want my username to go back into the ether for some other random person to take.
  2. My read later app, Reader by Readwise, does Twitter List Digests, and my Baseball list is an excellent resource that I won’t be ready to give up until some important folks are on Bluesky1.

So how do I make sure those two things stay intact while also ensuring I can never log in again? Here’s what I’m doing.

How to Phantom Deactivate Your Twitter Account

First, I’m not going to re-litigate a bunch of stuff other people have written. Justin Jackson has a particularly good post on moving to Bluesky, so I recommend you also read that.

I should also note that this doesn’t really have anything to do with Bluesky, except that I feel it’s a suitable replacement at the moment. Even if you never intend to join another social network, these steps can be how you leave Twitter for good.

OK, so here we go. First, I took several steps to manage my tweets. I should mention that at various points over the years, I deleted large swaths of tweets. In 17 years, it’s likely that something I said when I was a younger man was regrettable, and I no longer want it on the internet.

  1. Download my Twitter archive. This took 24 hours because Twitter has become increasingly user hostile.
  2. Then I used this tool to create a website out of it. You can find that at tweets.casabona.org.
  3. Tweet Deleter is what I chose to delete all except my last ~30 tweets. It should have deleted replies and likes as well. It’s unclear if that actually worked as Twitter is still displaying 470ish “posts,” but only 30 are available.
  4. I made my “farewell” post. All I did was I link to my archive and where to find me. I pinned it to the top of my account.

Now the managing your account part. Here’s everything I did:

  1. Deleted my phone number
  2. Under Security and Access, remove any 3rd party connections to my Twitter account
  3. Logged out of all Sessions across any devices except my current one
  4. Set my posts to protected
  5. Make it so no one can DM me

I was also going to unfollow everyone I was following, but figured that didn’t matter.

Now for the most crucial bit.

Locking Yourself Out (Deliberately)

Since I would rather not deactivate myself, I need to make it hard — nearly insurmountable — for me to log back in.

I already mentioned removing my phone number, so I won’t get recovery text messages. However, I’m keeping two-factor authentication on, using a verification code through an authentication app.

The next thing I did was change my email address to one from Apple’s “Hide my Email” feature. This is a randomly generated email address I wouldn’t know off the top of my head, so I’d have to look it up.

Now the final 2 steps:

  1. Log out of the sole remaining device where I’m logged in
  2. Delete all the Twitter entries in my password managers and authentication apps (Apple Passwords, 1Password, Google Authenticator, etc.).

This includes deleting the 2FA codes, and the recovery codes.

One Step I did Not Take

The original plan was also to delete the Hide my Email entry in iCloud, meaning I’d never be able to gain access to my Twitter email address.

But in rubber ducking this problem with ChatGPT, it surfaced a BBC article about Twitter’s policy on inactive accounts. Since the main goal is to make it challenging to access Twitter while maintaining my username, at this point I will keep the email address — locked away, difficult to remember. I’d have to be very intentional about recovering it.

Hopefully in the future, Twitter/X will offer a way to archive accounts without full-on deleting them.

Update (11/10/25): I did end up taking this step, in part because I forgot I didn’t until I re-read this. I’m comfortable with both the unlikelihood of the policy going into effect, and that I won’t care if it does.

This Isn’t for Everyone

I fully recognize that this isn’t for everyone. Most people will either deactivate their account, perfectly fine with the username going back into the ether, or exhibit some sort of self-control to not randomly log in when they’re bored.

But this seems like a suitable solution for me — perhaps it is for you too.

For now, you can find me on Bluesky and LinkedIn.

  1. They are Jeff Passan and Jomboy Media personalities Jimmy, Jake, Joze, and BBD. ?