Preserve public media for study

Provenance-first archiving

Research datasets benefit from traceable sources. PasteGrab's link-first model ties each file to a public URL and job ID rather than an anonymous upload pipeline — useful when documenting how media was obtained.

Resolve metadata before download to record title, duration, and host in your lab notebook or citation file.

Quality and format for analysis

Use Best quality when you need maximum fidelity for visual analysis. MP3 may suffice for speech-centric studies. Our comparison of link downloaders versus screen recording explains why source streams usually beat re-encoded capture.

See the yt-dlp supported sites article for how host coverage maps to PasteGrab.

Ethics and limits

Researchers must follow IRB guidance, platform terms, and copyright. PasteGrab cannot access private, DRM-protected, or login-only material.

Consult acceptable use and responsible downloading posts before collecting social media samples at scale.

What makes the difference

Researchers can preview a public link, choose a file, and download it in a few steps.

• Stable job IDs for tracking downloads
• Metadata resolve step before download
• Supports a wide range of public hosts

Start here

Jump to downloaders, guides, and solutions relevant to researchers.