Archiving TikTok

Overview

TikTok is social media platform for creating and sharing short-form videos. For best results, run your crawl with Brozzler crawling technology and the seed formats described in this article.

Known issues

Social media platforms like TikTok can be difficult to archive. TikTok is currently experiencing the following issues, which we continue to actively monitor:

• ⚠️ TikTok profiles and tag pages are currently experiencing replay issues in Wayback.
• ⚠️ Some profiles and individual posts can be replayed through the Wayback banner.

You can view a full list of known issues for archiving various platforms on our Status of monitored platforms page. 

On this page: 

• How to select and format your TikTok seeds
• Scoping TikTok seeds
• Running your crawl
• What to expect from your TikTok archives

How to select and format your TikTok seeds

When adding new TikTok seeds to your collection, apply the Standard seed type. Format the seed URL like the following, replacing only the unique username, video ID string, or tag where applicable:

• Post: https://www.tiktok.com/@museumofneonart/video/7010044943708327173 
• Account: https://www.tiktok.com/@pbsnature/ 
• Tag: https://www.tiktok.com/tag/cartok/ 

Scoping TikTok seeds

When a new TikTok seed is added to a collection, default scoping rules are automatically applied at the seed level. To learn more, including how you can add the default scoping rules to existing seeds, see Sites with automated scoping rules.

Default scoping for TikTok seeds

All TikTok seeds added on or after October 1, 2021, have the following seed-level scoping rules applied automatically to collect the intended video content and prevent the crawl from following recommended videos indefinitely.

• Ignore Robots.txt
• Exclude document if it matches the regular expression: ^https?://([^.]*\.)*tiktokcdn\.com/[^.]*video\/tos\/.*$
• Exclude document if it contains the text: byteoversea.com
• Exclude document if it contains the text: tiktok.com/acrawler/
• Exclude document if it contains the text: tiktok.com/api/policy/
• Exclude document if it contains the text: tiktok.com/api/recommend/
• Exclude document if it contains the text: tiktok.com/api/share/
• Exclude document if it contains the text: tiktok.com/node/share/discover

To limit the scope of TikTok seeds added before October 2021, apply the above scope rules manually and/or in bulk.

Default scoping collect all of the video posts associated with an account's or tag's seed URL. To archive only the homepage for an account profile or topic, use the One Page seed type.

Running your crawl

For best results, crawl TikTok seeds using Brozzler crawling technology. 

What to expect from your TikTok archives

Recently crawled TikTok pages for profiles and tags may not replay in Wayback. You can replay some profiles and individual posts through the Wayback banner. 

For historic crawls, Archive-It Wayback cannot yet replay scrolling feeds infinitely for longer TikTok account profile or tag feeds. Pages with multiple TikTok videos may only replay the first video in Wayback; videos after the first may be able to replay by opening them in new browser tabs.