X offers a very well documented and reasonably fast process to export your data from the service.
It is necessary to highlight that the export of data for users is intended so that they can verify and analyze all the information corresponding to them. Due to logical circumstances, it is not possible to export X's information to another service that belongs to the social network category directly (as happens with other applications with a different purpose of use such as taking notes apps).
This official X article provides information on how to carry out the process on the various platforms and the type of information relevant to the user that will be downloaded. Among the most notable information we can observe the following:
To start the process we go to our profile (by tapping on our profile icon) if we are on a mobile device. When we are on the website, we tap or click on the More section in the main navigation menu located at the bottom left of the timeline.
Once the previous step is completed, the remaining steps of the process are similar regardless of the device and operating system in use. The next thing is to enter the Settings and privacy section. Later we go to Your Account and here we will have an option called Download an archive of your data, which we will click or tap.
Subsequently, it is necessary to wait for X to finish exporting the information of the user who requested the download. According to my own experience, this process ends in a couple of days, which is fast taking into account my own experiences with other social media services.
Once the process of downloading the information by X is completed, in the same section Download an archive of your data, we will be shown the option to download a .zip file. It is worth mentioning that it is the only format in which X allows downloading.
When unzipping the .zip file we will find two folders (assets and data) and a Your archive.html file.
The html file allows us to see a general breakdown of our activity such as the number of posts, likes, blocked accounts and muted accounts, among others. Likewise, we can enter each of these sections and we can verify our information with a graphical interface quite similar to the one that appears in the X timeline and that allows the user some comfort.
If we want to know our information in more detail, we can enter the data folder that was created after decompressing the .zip file or in the Open this folder option in the previously mentioned Your archive.html file.
In this folder we have a very wide and diverse amount of information. Most of these files are in a JavaScript format, therefore they have the .js extension.
Each of these files is named based on its content. In the tweets.js file all our posts are found in an array of objects. This format is found in each of the existing .js files.
In the data folder, we can also see that there are folders that include _media in the name. These show us the multimedia files that accompany our posts and also our profile and cover photo, among others.
This solution allows the user to directly download from X a history of the user's own information and corresponding activity.
This solution does not allow the user to migrate the corresponding information to another social network service due to the various ways in which they operate. It also does not allow you to select the format in which the backup will be downloaded or export it to a cloud storage service. It will be stored directly to the device on which the .zip file is downloaded.
The source code (markdown) for this article can be found on GitHub.