i, r0b0t

“Ava - Isn't it strange, to create something that hates you?“

At the beginning of this year, I started seeing videos with the same format. It started on YouTube and then extended to Instagram. The format was simple: gameplay videos (of any game) with funny WhatsApp audios or a robot reading post screenshots. I got curious about how they were made and if it was possible to automate this process. In this post, I'll show how it's possible to write a robot that can:

• Scrape and take screenshots of Reddit posts and comments;
• Generate MP3 files for reading post comments;
• Produce a video;
• Automatically publish to a TikTok account;

I did some research and found a few GitHub repositories that did what I wanted. I had to make some code modifications in both projects to get the flow working. After that, I decided to create a new project, combining the ideas from both repositories, and publish it here, explaining the steps of these automations.

• tiktok-askreddit;
• Tiktok-uploader;

Stack

As usual, I used Node.js and Python. In Node.js, I perform Reddit scraping and TikTok uploads. I didn't do everything in Node.js because I found it too cumbersome to create videos using it. Even with libraries, the results weren't satisfactory. It was much easier to generate MP3 files using the voices from Microsoft Edge.

The goal of this post is not to be original, but to highlight that simple (or not so simple) videos can be automated, and the channel you enjoyed today might be managed by a robot.

Note: I opted to include incomplete sections of code due to their length, but they are all available in the GitHub repository.

Note 2: Since the explanations became lengthy, I divided them into subpages. Just click on the items at the beginning of the post, and you'll be redirected. You can return to the main post at the end of the page.

• Repositório no Github;
• Video Gerado e Postado no Tiktok;