Skip to content
New issue

Have a question about this project? Sign up for a free GitHub account to open an issue and contact its maintainers and the community.

By clicking “Sign up for GitHub”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy statement. We’ll occasionally send you account related emails.

Already on GitHub? Sign in to your account

Adds two watch-history articles #66

Merged
merged 1 commit into from
Jun 19, 2024
Merged
Show file tree
Hide file tree
Changes from all commits
Commits
File filter

Filter by extension

Filter by extension

Conversations
Failed to load comments.
Loading
Jump to
Jump to file
Failed to load files.
Loading
Diff view
Diff view
2 changes: 1 addition & 1 deletion articles/photos1.md
Original file line number Diff line number Diff line change
Expand Up @@ -2,7 +2,7 @@
title: Google Photos archive to online storage/backup
datatype: Photos
sources: Google Photos
destinations: ["Microsoft OneDrive", "Drive", "Dropbox"]
destinations: ["Microsoft OneDrive", "Google Drive", "Dropbox"]
---

# How to archive your Google Photos to Drive, Dropbox or Microsoft OneDrive, using Google Takeout
Expand Down
55 changes: 55 additions & 0 deletions articles/watch-history1.md
Original file line number Diff line number Diff line change
@@ -0,0 +1,55 @@
---
title: Transferring your Instagram post/video viewing history elsewhere
datatype: "Viewing History"
sources: Instagram
destinations: ["Download myself", "Google Drive", "Dropbox"],
Copy link
Collaborator

Choose a reason for hiding this comment

The reason will be displayed to describe this comment to others. Learn more.

Heads up @lisad, this trailing comma is apparently not valid syntax so the portmap deploy failed: https://github.com/dtinit/portmap/actions/runs/9587501977/job/26437681020#step:8:171

---

# Instagram "Download your information" for posts/videos you've viewed

Instagram offers reasonably fast access to your data via your Profile page. It’s a substantial package of information, available for download or transfer either in HTML or JSON format.

Follow these links:

* A “More” link on the bottom left of the Instagram Web interface
* leads to a “Settings” link
* Settings includes a link to “Accounts Center”.
* Accounts Center page has a link to “Your information and permissions”
* This page has a link to “Download your information”
* The popup has a button for “Download or transfer information”
* Select your account
* Select "All available information"
* Select "Download to device" or "Transfer to destination"

## Downloading your own data

The option to "download to device" is followed by options for date range, data format and media quality. The HTML data format option provides static pages that are easier for most people to navigate - just open the file in a Web browser after it's downloaded.

After finalizing the data request, the process to bundle up your data happens asynchronously. Instagram sends an email with a link back to “Download your information” and the Download link. The Download link provides a ZIP file that your operating system is likely to be able to easily open, showing quite a few directories of files.

A few notes on what is and isn’t available:

* Includes a list of links for Web sites you’ve visited from within an Instagram app.
* Includes recent searches, contacts, followers, following,
* Includes a list of ads you’ve seen but only author and date (no link to ad information)
* Includes lists of posts viewed, and videos viewed (but no links to posts/videos). Note that this is filed under the folders ads_information/ads_and_topics.

The files for posts viewed and videos watched provide only author and timestamp. As far as we can tell, the timestamp associated a post or video you’ve viewed is the _time of viewing_. This, combined with the author of the post or video, does not provide a way to reconstruct WHICH of tht author's posts or videos you watched.

Note that the he file containing of liked posts DOES include links to those posts - filed in the folder “your_instagram_activity”.

The availability of the download is pretty quick, depending on how much data is on your account and how much you request. In our tests we received emails in a couple minutes.

The JSON downloads appear to have all the same data (which means this also doesn’t have links to Instagram posts or videos you’ve viewed, only the author and timestamp) but it does have the data in a machine readable format which may be useful for some projects.

## Transferring - cloud backup

In addition to providing a way to download this information, Instagram also offers a way to transfer the same information (in ZIP file format) to Google Drive or Dropbox. These sites may be useful locations to get at part of this information without downloading it all to your own device, or providing a backup of certain important account information.

The information transferred to a cloud location will not be publically available at that location, unless you’ve configured that drive or cloud storage to be publicly visible.

## What it does not do?

Instagram “Download your information” does not provide access to URLs of posts or videos you have viewed.

The transfer options are effective for copying your account information to a static location in the cloud that acts like a backup or a simple file storage. That is to say, the transfer options provided by Instagram do not allow you to move your Instagram posts, followers or other material contents of your account to another social media service where those posts will be served.
44 changes: 44 additions & 0 deletions articles/watch-history2.md
Original file line number Diff line number Diff line change
@@ -0,0 +1,44 @@
---
title: Youtube video watching history
datatype: "Viewing History"
sources: Youtube
destinations: ["Download myself", "Google Drive", "Microsoft OneDrive", "Dropbox", "Box"],
Copy link
Collaborator

Choose a reason for hiding this comment

The reason will be displayed to describe this comment to others. Learn more.

Ditto

---

# Youtube video watching history

In order to access and download your data from YouTube you will need to use Google Takeout which is a Google project that allows users of Google products, such as YouTube and Gmail, to export their data to a downloadable file.

Google Takeout has a very simple and intuitive UI that will simplify the process.
To start you can go to the Google Takeout URL: https://takeout.google.com/settings/takeout
Once there, you have the option to select all the Google products you can export your data from. Since this document is dedicated to YouTube, we will click in Deselect all selections and then, only choose YouTube.

As soon as you selecting YouTub and before going on, two options will be available to you.

* formats
* scope

The first one is called Various formats. By clicking in here, you will be prompted by how your data will be downloaded and its formats (e.g, video metadata will be in CVS files as well as video interactions, playlist, channels, subscriptions, etc). It’s worth mentioning that the record information (Youtube search and watch history) is the only one that allows you to select in which format you want that specific data to be downloaded. You can choose between HTML and JSON.

The second option is called All YouTube data included (as default but it will change depending on how many data types you choose to download). Here, you will be able to choose specific YouTube data for export. You can choose among several options including channels, songs-library-music, comments, video history, kids, playlists, etc.

Once you’ve chosen your formats and data types, click on Next step. In the next page you will be able to select the destinations in which your data will transfer to. Among the available options are: Send download link by email (could be the most useful), Add to Drive, Add to OneDrive, etc. Then, you need to select the frequency in which your data will be downloaded. You can agree to do a complete export or do 6 exports during the course of a year (exports will happen every 2 months).

Finally:

* Select the file type (.zip, .tgz) and the file size.
* Click on Create export.

## Downloading yourself

Now you just need to wait for your data to be ready to be downloaded. You will receive an email that will allow you to download it according to the destination you choose.
Google does this process very quickly so you won’t have to wait more than a couple of minutes.
Lastly, once Google has finished the process and the data was able to be downloaded, you can see the folders and its formations according to your previous selections (mostly CSV files).

## Sending to Google Drive, Dropbox, Microsoft OneDrive, Box

Although your Youtube data can be transfered to these online storage options, consider this an online backup or extension of your local storage: once at the destination, your data will be static, and not part of any service. It may be useful to you as an archive or as a way to get the small segment of data you want without downloading it all immediately to a device.

## What it does not do

The data export does not show how long you watched a video for. As far as we could tell, watching for only a few seconds still counts as a view.
21 changes: 21 additions & 0 deletions articles/watch-history3.md
Original file line number Diff line number Diff line change
@@ -0,0 +1,21 @@
---
title: Tiktok Video Browsing History
datatype: "Viewing History"
sources: Tiktok
destinations: ["Download myself"],
Copy link
Collaborator

Choose a reason for hiding this comment

The reason will be displayed to describe this comment to others. Learn more.

☝️

---

# Tiktok Video Browsing History

Tiktok offers access to your account data on the Tiktok website. Via the Profile icon on the top right, choose Settings, then Download your data.

* To download and be able to find browsing history, choose all data
* Choose TXT or JSON depending on your use case

Once the download is complete it is available on the same page, but on a different tab. The download is a ZIP file that contains one document with internal structure. The “All data” download includes a “Video Browsing History” section, whereas when we chose custom data rather than all data and chose “Activity”, the video browsing history was not included.

For each video in the Video Browsing History, the JSON data just includes the link to the video and a date. The date appears to be the date you viewed the video, not the date it was posted.

## What it does not do

The data export does not show how long you watched a video for, or whether it was found on your "FYP" or some other way.