What Brolly Captures

Overview

Once an account is connected, Brolly watches it continuously and keeps a time-stamped copy of the supported content it publishes and of the public replies the platform makes available. You will see the word record everywhere in Brolly; this article explains what one is, what it holds, and the handful of ways the archive can differ from what you see on the platform itself.

What a Record Is

A record is Brolly's captured copy of one piece of social media activity. Each of these is stored as its own record:

• a post (including reels, videos and other published items)
• a comment on a post, and each reply to a comment
• a private or direct message, on accounts where message capture is enabled
• a story, on platforms that have them

Because every interaction is its own record, a busy thread produces many records — one per post, comment and reply — and the counts on Home and in the Archive add them all up. Comments and replies are kept linked to the post they belong to, so opening a post in the Inspector shows its whole thread.

What Each Record Contains

• The content — the text as it was published
• Media — images, video and other attachments, stored with the record so they survive the original being removed
• Link screenshots — a capture of how a linked page looked at the time, since the page may change later
• Metadata — information that is not visible on the platform, such as who posted it, the platform's own identifiers and timestamps. Metadata is what makes the archive defensible, and every export can include it
• A capture timestamp — exactly when Brolly archived it

Every record is a time-stamped, tamper-evident copy of the original, which is what makes the archive suitable for public-records and FOI obligations.

Versions: Edits, Hides and Deletions

Records capture not just what was published but what happened to it afterwards. Each change becomes a new version of the same record rather than a new record:

• Edited — the original and the changed text are both kept, and the Inspector can highlight exactly what changed between versions
• Hidden and Unhidden — a comment hidden by a page moderator (and later restored) is recorded each time
• Deleted — the record stays in Brolly after it is removed from the platform, badged Deleted

In the Archive each record appears once, with its version history listed on the card; the Action types filter (Create, Edit, Hidden, Unhidden, Deleted) finds records by what happened to them. See Using the Archive and Viewing a Record.

Historic Records and Backfill

Connecting an account does not just start capture from that moment. Brolly also crawls the account's earlier content and brings it into the archive. These are historic records, and by default they go all the way back — recordkeeping obligations usually apply to everything your organisation has published, not just content from the day archiving began. When you connect a Facebook, Instagram, TikTok or Threads account the dialog's Historic capture choice lets you keep All time or set a Custom earliest date instead; see Connecting Your First Account.

Historic records sit in the Archive alongside everything else, with their media and metadata, but because the content already existed when Brolly first saw it, some things cannot be reconstructed:

• Hyperlinks are not captured for historic records, as the linked content may have changed or gone
• Edits and deletions that happened before the connection cannot be retrieved — the record is the post as it stood at the time of the crawl

A similar backfill happens after a reconnection. When a platform expires Brolly's access and the account is re-connected, Brolly fills in what the platform still makes available for the period the connection was down. It cannot recover what the platform no longer offers: a post edited or deleted during the gap is captured as it stands at reconnection, and a Story that expired in the meantime is gone. Records already in the archive are unaffected. Re-connect promptly and review the affected period. See Re-connecting an Account.

How Often Capture Runs

Connected accounts are checked continuously and most new records appear in the Archive within minutes. High-volume accounts may see a short delay during busy periods. The All records tile on Home shows when the archive was last updated, and the Records archived chart shows capture over time — a gap there usually means an account stopped capturing. See Home.

Why Counts Can Differ From the Platform

A record's comment tally in Brolly can differ slightly from the number the platform shows. Brolly counts the comments it has captured, and:

• comments on historic records were captured as they stood at the time of the crawl, so any removed before then were never seen
• Brolly keeps comments that were later deleted or hidden, so its count can also be higher than the platform's

None of this changes what is archived: every comment Brolly captured is in the record, with its own versions.

Platform Notes

• Messages are captured only on accounts with message capture enabled. Facebook asks for that permission when you connect a Page, and the account's drawer under Settings → Accounts shows whether Messages enabled is on. See Archive Messages
• Instagram Stories disappear from Instagram within 24 hours but are captured as records on connected professional accounts. An Instagram account connected long ago may need re-connecting to grant the Stories permission. See Connecting Instagram
• Facebook dark posts (paid posts that never appear on the Page's public feed) are archived once they attract comments; the comments arrive first and the post record follows. A dark post with no comments is not archived. LinkedIn dark posts are not archived. Keep your own copy of paid creative if you need it on file
• Facebook Pages, not profiles. Brolly captures Facebook Pages, which are for organisations and public roles, not personal profiles. Posts and comments made from a personal profile — an elected official commenting in a community group, say — are not captured unless they are on a Page already connected to Brolly. See Connecting Facebook

Tips

The quickest way to see what capture looks like is Show all content on Home: posts, comments and replies together, newest first.

If a record you expect is missing, check the account's status under Settings → Accounts before anything else — an expired connection is by far the most common cause.