Replies from other people stay up when you delete a tweet on X, your own post goes, and quote tweets keep their own text. Only your side of the conversation is yours to remove.
When you delete a tweet on X, the post, its media and its engagement counts disappear, but replies written by other accounts stay as their own posts and quote tweets keep their authors' words. Circleboom removes your own tweets and your own replies from X in bulk, working from your X archive under X's Enterprise API program.
→ Delete tweet replies you wrote, with the tweets they answered
The table below maps each part of a tweet to its fate.
What happens to each part of a tweet when you delete it on X
Each object attached to a tweet has its own owner, and the owner decides what a deletion can touch. Your post is yours. Replies, quotes and copies belong to the people who made them.
| Object | Who owns it | After you delete |
|---|---|---|
| Your post, media and counts | You | Gone for good |
| Replies by other accounts | The replier | Stay, with no post above them |
| Quote tweets of your post | The quoter | Stay with their own text |
| Plain retweets of your post | The retweeter | Nothing of yours left to show |
| Your own replies in the thread | You | Stay until you delete them |
| Embeds of your post on websites | Your content | Break or lose context |
| Screenshots and pasted copies | Whoever made them | Stay; deletion does not reach them |
I put this table first because two rows surprise people most.
The first is the replier row: deleted tweet replies from other accounts stay up, orphaned from the post they answered. The second is your own replies: deleting the parent tweet leaves every answer you wrote under it in place.
A deletion removes one post. It does not remove a conversation.
Circleboom's Delete All Tweets documentation states the same boundary from the product side: retweets, quote tweets and replies from other accounts that referenced a deleted tweet may still exist, and the account owner cannot remove them.
What you can remove is everything in the "You" rows.
Embeds, links and other references to the post
Embeds and links are the row people forget until a partner asks why a page looks broken. Circleboom's Delete All Tweets best practices warn that old links, embedded posts and historical references can break or lose context once a tweet is deleted.
That matters most for posts that worked as proof: an announcement a news page embedded, a customer answer a help article pointed to, a launch tweet that collected backlinks. Old tweets can carry trust, support history and community memory, and once deleted, that public history is gone.
Before deleting a post like that, check where it is embedded or linked, and update those pages first.
Which situation are you in before deleting a tweet with replies on Twitter?
The right move depends on why the post has to go. Most people deleting a tweet that started a conversation are in one of three situations:
- The post drew criticism. Deleting removes your words, but the critical deleted tweet replies stay on their authors' profiles. Save the thread first, then decide whether a short follow-up post serves you better than silence.
- The post is an outdated announcement with customer replies. Your answers to customers are replies of yours. Delete them with the announcement, and protect any answer that is still correct.
- The post is an old take with a long thread. The thread may be years deep. Use your archive, since older replies can sit outside the latest 3,200 tweets the X API returns.
In every case, the archive comes first, and your own replies belong in the same cleanup as the parent tweet.
Why other people's replies stay up after you delete your tweet
Replies stay because each reply on X is a separate post that belongs to the account that wrote it. Your deletion acts on your account only, so it cannot reach into another person's profile.
X's help page on deleting posts sets the scope of a deletion: the post leaves your account, your followers' timelines and X search. Copies other people made, and cached copies held outside X, are outside that scope.
So deleted tweet replies keep living on the repliers' profiles and in their reply tabs. What changes is context: the reply now answers a post nobody can open.
That is why I decide on the thread before I decide on the post. If the replies are the problem and the post is still accurate, deletion fixes the wrong thing.
X lets you choose who can reply and hide individual replies, as its page about conversations on X explains. Circleboom also has a walkthrough on how to limit replies to your tweets.
If the post itself has to go, delete the tweet and every reply you wrote under it in one run. The parent is only half of what you left in that thread.
What happens to quote tweets and retweets of a deleted tweet?
Quote tweets stay, with their authors' own text intact, and only your quoted part is gone from them. A plain retweet has no text of its own, so once your post is deleted there is nothing of yours left for it to display.
Quote tweets behave like deleted tweet replies in one respect: the author keeps them.
The difference comes from ownership again. A quote tweet is a new post that contains the quoter's words plus a reference to yours. Delete yours and the quoter's words remain.
Quote tweets are also the part of the aftermath that is hardest to see, harder even than deleted tweet replies, which at least sit in one thread. Some come from protected accounts, which do not show up for you the way public quotes do.
If you want a picture of that hidden layer before you delete, the guide on who private quote retweeted me explains what can and cannot be found.
Three practical consequences follow for anyone deleting a tweet that was widely quoted:
- The quotes keep circulating on their own, so the conversation about your post can continue without it.
- A quote that criticized your post now reads as an answer with no question.
- Reaching out to the quoter is the only way to change their post; no tool can remove it for you.
Deleting cleans your own timeline; the reaction to the post stays where its authors put it.
Is deleting a tweet on X permanent, and how fast does it disappear?
Yes, deleting a tweet is permanent. Neither X nor Circleboom can restore a deleted post, and Circleboom's documentation is explicit that after a deletion, the local X archive is the only remaining record of what was posted.
That permanence covers your posts only. Deleted tweet replies written by other accounts were never yours to delete, so they are neither removed nor protected by anything you do.
Speed depends on how many posts you remove. A single tweet deleted on X goes from your profile right away. A bulk deletion runs within X's API rate limits, so large jobs take time and the browser has to stay open until the run completes.
For the timing question in more depth, the post on how fast Twitter deletes a tweet covers what readers usually notice in the minutes and hours after a deletion.
Timing that matters more than the deletion
Two timing facts matter more for planning than the deletion itself:
- X can take 24 to 48 hours to prepare your data archive after you request it.
- The archive has to be on your drive before you delete, because it cannot be rebuilt afterwards.
That is why the archive request should be the first thing you do, not the last.
In my own cleanups, I request the archive the moment a deletion is on the table, then use the waiting time to decide which posts and replies are worth keeping.
Permanence is the reason to slow down; the archive is the reason you can.
Your own replies are the part of a Twitter thread you can still clean
Your own replies are separate posts on your account, and they stay live until you delete them yourself. After the parent tweet is gone, they still show on your profile with no tweet above them.
These are the deleted tweet replies people forget about. They sit in the Replies tab of your profile, readable by anyone who scrolls back, often with half a sentence that only made sense next to the original.
Circleboom's Delete All Tweets reads your X archive and deletes your tweets, retweets and replies on X in bulk, with filters choosing what goes. It works from the archive's tweet.js file, so it reaches your full history instead of only the latest 3,200 tweets that the X API returns.
On X itself, every reply has to be opened and deleted one at a time, with no filter to find them. For a thread with dozens of your answers spread over months, that turns a five-minute decision into an afternoon of scrolling.
Circleboom is a verified Enterprise partner of X, which means the deletion runs through X's sanctioned access and inside its rate limits instead of through a scraper. For a permanent action on your own account, that is the safety margin worth having.
When you are ready, bulk delete the tweet replies you left under deleted posts from the same archive you saved.
How the archive-based cleanup works in Circleboom
To start, log in to Circleboom with the X account the archive belongs to.
The tool then runs as a short wizard:
- A start screen explains the flow.
- An upload screen takes the tweet.js file from your archive folder.
- A filter screen shows how many tweets were found.
Only tweet.js is uploaded, not the whole archive ZIP, and it has to come from the account linked to your Circleboom subscription.
On the filter screen, all uploaded posts are selected by default. Post-type checkboxes for Tweets, ReTweets and Replies decide what kind of post goes, and the Approve & Delete panel shows the final count before you confirm.
If your goal is the reply side only, Circleboom's page to delete all your Twitter replies shows that use.
The same tweet.js file can be uploaded again later with other filters. Posts already deleted are skipped, so a cautious first run costs nothing.
Keeping the replies that still help
Not every reply you wrote should go. A reply that corrected a mistake in public, or one that other pages still link to, can be worth more than the post above it.
Circleboom's Protect List handles that case. You add specific tweets or replies to it before deleting, and everything on it is skipped while the rest of the selection is removed.
For deleted tweet replies of your own, that means you can clear the thread and keep the one answer people still link to.
Clean-slate option: mass-deleting tweets while the account itself stays open.
Checklist before you delete a tweet with replies on X
Deleted tweet replies are handled best by deciding in the right order. Before you remove a post that started a conversation, run through this:
- Request your X archive first, and wait for it before deleting anything.
- Save the replies you want to keep as evidence, since the archive holds your posts, not other people's.
- Decide whether limiting or hiding replies solves the problem better than deletion.
- Delete the post and, in the same run, the replies you wrote under it.
- Check the Approve & Delete count before you confirm, then keep the browser open until the job finishes.
The list puts the record before the deletion and your replies inside the same run, so nothing of yours is left in a thread you meant to close.
→ Run the archive cleanup for your tweet and your replies
What to know about replies after a deletion
Can someone still find my tweet after I delete it?
Mostly not through X. The post is no longer accessible from your public timeline or X search, although replies to a deleted tweet stay on their authors' profiles. Copies made before the deletion, such as screenshots, pasted text and cached pages outside X, can still exist, and a deleted tweet finder shows how people look for them.
Should I save a copy of the tweet and its replies first?
Yes. Your X archive is the backup for your own posts, and Circleboom can also export your tweets to a spreadsheet for review. Other people's replies are not in your archive, so screenshot or link the ones you need before the post goes.
Can I delete only the replies I wrote to one person?
Yes. The keyword filter in Delete All Tweets also searches @mentions, so entering that person's username with only Replies checked narrows the run to your replies to them. Circleboom's page to delete Twitter mentions covers the same filter for posts that mention an account.
