C.E.R.T.O. / Modules / Web pages / TikTok

PLATFORM · TIKTOK

TikTok

Comments on videos and photo posts, the film downloaded as a standalone file with its own hash, profile and published content.

It switches itself on

You paste the address into the forensic browser.
You start a web page acquisition, as always.
C.E.R.T.O. recognises the platform and does the rest.

No option to tick, no separate module to buy, no extra cost: it is the Web pages module, at its own rate.

A TikTok item disappears quickly: removed by its author, taken down by the platform or made private — and the comments go with it. Acquiring promptly fixes the content and the conversation beneath it while they still exist.

The film does not go inside the page archive, and that is not a choice: video streams travel under signed, expiring addresses that no archive can replay. C.E.R.T.O. downloads it separately, as a standalone file with its own cryptographic hash, so it stays playable with any player even years from now.

What goes into the bundle

What gets acquired

Only what the program actually does: every item matches a collection that exists in the code and has been tested on real acquisitions.

Comments on videos

Text, author, date and counters, with replies followed separately, one continuation per comment.

Comments on photo posts

Photo carousels use the same machinery as videos: one screenshot and one file per image, plus the comments panel.

The film

Downloaded as a standalone file, with its own hash, alongside the page bundle.

Profile and published content

Profile details and content grid. The document states which channel each item came from: when the list comes from the page rather than the service, it says so.

Recognised addresses

What you can paste

Recognition looks at the domain and the shape of the address. If it recognises nothing, it stays an ordinary web page acquisition: nothing is lost.

tiktok.com/@<utente>/video/<id>video with the comments panel
tiktok.com/@<utente>/photo/<id>photo carousel
tiktok.com/@<utente>profile and content grid
vm.tiktok.com/<codice>shortened link: it is followed

In the bundle

Where what it collects ends up

Folders inside the BagIt bundle, alongside everything else from the web acquisition: WACZ archive, screenshots, network traffic, certificates, report.

social/tiktok/
evidence/video-resources/

The bundle's interactive.html dashboard presents them in tables with search and sorting, and works offline, on a double click, even on a computer without C.E.R.T.O. installed.

The raw response stays in the bundle

Where collection goes through a service, every response is preserved verbatim with its provenance envelope: queried address, method, status, moment of receipt. Anyone contesting the data can go back to the source rather than trusting our table.

Sealed like every acquisition

A BagIt 1.0 bundle with an Ed25519 signature, a double RFC 3161 timestamp and a CASE/UCO description, verifiable by anyone, offline, with the included verifiers.

It says when it stops

The document reports how many items the platform announces, how many were collected and why collection stopped. A stated limit is worth more than an asserted completeness.

FAQ

Frequently asked questions

The questions we are asked most often about this platform.

Is the video acquired together with the page?

It is acquired, but not inside the page archive: video streams travel under signed, expiring addresses and no archive can replay them. C.E.R.T.O. downloads the film separately, as a standalone file with its own cryptographic hash, so it stays playable with any player even years from now.

Does it work with shortened links?

Yes. An address like vm.tiktok.com or vt.tiktok.com is a redirect: it is followed to the real content, and the bundle keeps both the address the operator pasted and the final one.

Can live streams be acquired?

Live streams are deliberately excluded from the dedicated collection: they have no persistent comments to acquire, because the message flow exists only while the stream is running. An ordinary web page acquisition, with session video and screenshots, remains possible.