How do these sites let you view private Tiktok profiles without following?

Well, I found out that there are sites like Retrievetik that let you view TikTok profiles, both public and private, without actually showing up as a viewer. Normally, TikTok’s official APIs don’t allow this unless the account owner has granted permission for your app to access their data.

I remember there used to be a URL that would return stories in a JSON format, but that link seems to be gone now.

At first, I thought these services might be using something like Puppeteer or another headless browser... Basically logging in with an account and browsing anonymously. But when I checked my own account through them, I noticed that no one was added to my story viewer list.

So, how exactly are these services pulling it off