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Privacy and safety
Public content Updated 4 min read Clearlla Team

Public vs Private Posts: What a Downloader Can and Can't See

A downloader sees what a signed-out visitor sees. Here is what that includes, what it leaves out, and why that boundary matters.

The short answer

Clearlla can process a post if anyone could view it without signing in. If a post needs a login, a follow approval, a membership, or a payment to see, Clearlla cannot open it and does not try.

What falls on each side

Public content

A public TikTok video, a post in an open subreddit, a pin on a public profile, a post on a public Mastodon account or Telegram channel. If the link opens in a private browser window without signing in, it is public.

Private posts and accounts

Posts from accounts set to private, secret Pinterest boards, and followers-only Mastodon posts. These are restricted by the owner, and only people they approve can see them.

Login-protected and access-controlled content

Private Discord servers, private Telegram groups, private subreddits, and paid or subscriber-only content. Reaching these needs an account with permission, and Clearlla never signs in on anyone's behalf.

Deleted content

Once a post is deleted, the platform stops serving it. There is nothing left to fetch, and an old link will return a not found error.

Why Clearlla stays on the public side

Privacy settings are a decision someone made about who sees their content. A tool that offers to get around that is ignoring the person's choice, and usually asking you for your own login to do it, which puts your account at risk too.

Clearlla is built for saving public media you could already watch. It does not ask for credentials, does not run bots inside servers, and does not offer workarounds for private or paid content.

Frequently asked questions

CT

Written by

Clearlla Team

Editorial & Engineering

The Clearlla editorial team builds and tests the downloader every day. We write from hands-on experience shipping Clearlla and saving public media across the platforms we support: TikTok, Reddit, Pinterest, Vimeo, Dailymotion, Streamable, Twitch, Bluesky, Mastodon, and Telegram, on both mobile and desktop.

More about the Clearlla team →

Where to go next

Picked from the same registry that powers the downloaders, so every link here points at something that works today.

Content version 1. Next editorial review due . Primary reader goal: Public content.

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