How Trendable collects publicly available information, and what it refuses to collect. Last updated 22 August 2026.
Trendable measures how short vertical videos spread on public platforms. To do that it records publicly visible information about videos — view counts over time, duration, hashtags, sounds. Because a video is attached to the account that published it, this necessarily includes the publishing account's public handle, which is personal data under the GDPR. This notice exists because that data is collected from platforms rather than from the people themselves (Article 14 GDPR).
| Category | Examples |
|---|---|
| Video identifiers and public metadata | platform video id, title or caption, duration, hashtags, sound title, publication time |
| Public engagement counts, repeatedly over time | views, likes, comments, shares |
| Publishing account's public handle | @example, and its publicly displayed follower count |
| Region of discovery | the country edition of the trending listing a video was found in |
| Biometric data | no face images, no face templates, no voice prints |
| Profile descriptions, bios, contact details, locations | not read, not stored |
| Audience demographics or inferred traits | not collected and not inferred |
| Comment text and commenter identities | only the comment count is recorded |
| Anything behind a login | we hold no accounts on the platforms we read and do not authenticate to them; only content visible to a logged-out visitor is read |
| Private accounts | not accessible and not sought |
No profile of any individual is built. Data is aggregated into statistics about formats, sounds and hashtags; individual handles function as source labels, not as subjects of analysis.
| Source | What is read |
|---|---|
| YouTube Data API v3 | official API, under Google's terms, with an API key |
TikTok public embed pages (tiktok.com/embed/) |
TikTok's own public embed surface; rounded view counts |
| tikwm.com | a third-party public mirror of TikTok data |
| VK API | official API with an authorised application |
| kling.ai, civitai.com | public listing pages; aggregate popularity of generation prompts and models — no personal data |
Requests originate from a single server in Germany. They are sequential and rate-limited — the TikTok mirror is capped at well under one request per second — and run on a fixed schedule measured in hours, not continuously. Collection is narrow by design: it is restricted to a defined list of content niches and to trending listings, and does not sweep platforms broadly. Requests are made without authentication and without residential proxies.
The purpose is to measure which video formats, sounds and hashtags are gaining attention, in order to inform what content to produce. The legal basis is legitimate interest (Article 6(1)(f) GDPR).
On the balancing test: the data is limited to what a person publishing a public video already displays to any visitor; no sensitive categories are collected; no individual is profiled, evaluated or ranked as a person; and the collection criteria are narrow rather than indiscriminate. The interest could not be served by less data, since measuring how attention moves requires repeated observation of public counts over time.
Observations are retained as a time series, because a trend is only visible across repeated measurements; a single snapshot carries no information. Data is not sold, licensed, shared with third parties, or used to train models offered to others. It is used solely to inform this project's own content decisions.
If you publish videos on these platforms, you may request access to what is held about your handle, its correction, its erasure, or object to its processing entirely. An objection will be honoured: the handle is removed from collection and existing records for it are deleted. There is no requirement to explain why, and no account or verification burden beyond showing control of the handle.
Contact: privacy@trendable.net. You also have the right to lodge a complaint with a supervisory authority.