What BackTalk watches
BackTalk watches 10 platforms for mentions of your keywords. Some work the moment you add a keyword; the rest switch on once you add a free or metered key. Every platform is optional and can be turned on or off per workspace, so you only run the ones you care about.
The platforms
| Platform | What it covers | To turn it on |
|---|---|---|
| Hacker News | Stories and comments | Nothing, included |
| dev.to | Posts and comments | Nothing, included |
| GitHub | Issues and pull requests | Nothing, included |
| Posts and comments | Brave Search key | |
| Substack | Newsletter posts | Brave Search key |
| Medium | Articles | Brave Search key |
| Public posts | Brave Search key | |
| Stack Overflow | Questions and answers across the Stack Exchange network | Stack Exchange key (free) |
| YouTube | Videos | YouTube Data API key (free) |
| Bluesky | Posts | A deployment-wide account (set by the operator) |
Included with no setup
Hacker News, dev.to and GitHub have usable public APIs, so they start working as soon as you add a keyword. There is nothing to configure.
One search key unlocks four more
Reddit, Substack, Medium and LinkedIn have no usable public search API, so BackTalk reaches them through a single metered web-search key. Add one Brave Search key in Settings → Platform keys and all four turn on at once. Brave gives a monthly free allowance before it charges, and you are billed by Brave with no markup.
Free data-source keys
Two platforms need their own free official key before that source will sync:
- Stack Overflow needs a free Stack Apps key to turn the source on; the guide explains why keyless access does not work.
- YouTube needs a free YouTube Data API key. YouTube has no keyless search.
Both keys are free (no dollar cost, just a daily quota), and both are optional: skip either and the rest of the workspace is unaffected.
Bluesky
Bluesky search runs on a shared monitoring account configured once for the whole deployment, not per workspace. If your operator has set it up, Bluesky mentions appear alongside the rest; if not, Bluesky simply returns nothing and every other source keeps working.
AI answers
Alongside those platforms, your inbox also carries AI answers: events from the AI visibility probes, such as a rank change or a new competitor showing up in what the models recommend. It is not a platform you sync; it is a filter in the inbox, and it appears once you run AI probes.
Turning platforms on and off
Every platform has a per-workspace switch under Settings → General → Platforms, each with a live count of how many signals it has produced. Turning a platform off stops it syncing but keeps the mentions it already found; Delete data removes those stored signals and resets the source so re-enabling it starts a fresh 7-day backfill. A platform that needs a key you have not added yet shows a hint linking to where you add it.