Historic records

When you connect a social media account, Brolly doesn't just start capturing from that moment — it also backfills the content posted before the connection. We call these historic records, because they can't be captured in real time the way new content is.

Historic records appear in your Feed alongside everything else, so your archive covers the full life of the account, not just the period since you joined Brolly.

What historic records include

• A screenshot of how the post appeared to the public.
• All related media (images, video).
• The record's metadata.

How historic records differ from real-time captures

Because the content already existed when Brolly first saw it, some things can't be reconstructed:

• Hyperlinks aren't captured for historic records, as the linked content may have been edited or may no longer be accessible.
• Edits and deletions that happened before the connection can't be retrieved — Brolly can only capture the post as it stood at the time of the historic crawl.

By contrast, once an account is connected, Brolly monitors it continuously and captures edits and deletions as they happen — see How automatic record capture works.

This is also why comment counts on older posts can differ slightly from what the platform shows — see The comment tally on records. For how far back capture goes, see Can we specify a start date for capture?.