SIU Today Fall 2020 - 21

Social Media Update
By Joe Stephenson, CIFI, FCLS

Saving Videos in Seven Steps or Less

Wow! It has certainly been an interesting summer with no
shortage of newsworthy events happening all around us.
On the technology side of things, Twitter has been hacked,
SpaceX launched multiple satellites in low orbit (which I hope
improves my Internet), and we are gearing up for IASIU's first
ever virtual conference!

is just easier using a browser extension to accomplish this. In
fact, if your company lets you, using browser extensions are a
great way to download not just videos, but images as well from
different platforms. Unfortunately, most browser extensions
are set up for a single platform, therefore you have to download
a ton of them to cover all the sites you want.

As a result, we have seen a continued growth in the use of social
media, particularly with videos. More and more people are on
TikTok (and numbers grew when it was reported it would be
banned), and videos are a staple of Instagram, YouTube and
Facebook. So, when I was trying to decide what I would write
about this quarter, I thought it might be time to review just how
easy it is to download videos without software or a browser
extension, or using an unknown website.

But I digress, so let's get going and talk about how easy it is
to download videos. We will start with Facebook since many
investigators gravitate to this platform first. When you find
a video on Facebook that you want to download, just click
on it to open it in full view mode. This should isolate out the
URL in the address bar. Next, you want to go to the URL and
change the 'www' to 'mbasic'. For example, a URL that was
https://www.facebook.com/iasiu/videos/59431 would now be
https://mbasic.facebook.com/iasiu/videos/59431.

As investigators, it is important for us to understand how
platforms work and how we can use the code that creates
the platform to our benefit. Free websites come and go, and
software gets outdated more often than we would like. However,
our IT Departments don't usually block browser developer
tools, which means there aren't as many roadblocks with using
these techniques. More importantly, it does not require any
programming knowledge. Given the fact that you are a member
of IASIU, you've reached a point in your career where you have
the intelligence and fortitude to learn something new. Plus,
with the new format for SIUToday, I'll even provide a video
to help you follow along - once you finish reading this article.
When discussing the ability to download videos, not all platforms
are the same. It depends on how they are structured, but would
it surprise you if I told you that as of today, downloading
videos from TikTok, YouTube and Instagram all follow the
same seven steps? What if I told you that downloading a video
from Facebook was even easier? Twitter on the other hand, is
extremely difficult so we won't even discuss that today and it

Facebook's 'mbasic' site is configured for mobile devices that
might be older, or for areas of the world with slower internet,
etc. It is a 'basic' mobile version of Facebook. What that means
for us is that as soon as you put in 'mbasic' and hit enter, the
video will appear in a more simplistic version of the platform,
but ready for download. Just click on the video and it should
open in a new tab, isolated all by itself. In the lower right
corner of the video will be three vertical dots (also known as a
kebab icon) and when you click on them, a download option
will now show up. So, it is about four steps to download a video
on Facebook. Open the video, change the URL to mbasic, open
the video on the new platform, and click on the vertical dots.
Oh, and then click download, so I guess it is five steps.
With YouTube, TikTok and Instagram, there are a few more
steps, and this is where you must be willing to explore the
developer tools in your browser window. I promise you it
sounds more complicated than it is. I use Google Chrome,
so I will explain things using this platform, but just about

FALL 2020 | SIU TODAY

21
https://www.facebook.com/iasiu/videos/59431 https://mbasic.facebook.com/iasiu/videos/59431
SIU Today Fall 2020

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