Instagram no longer allows people without an account to view photos on computers(manualdousuario.net)
manualdousuario.net
Instagram no longer allows people without an account to view photos on computers
https://manualdousuario.net/instagram-photos-videos-unlogged-on-computers/
311 comments
This is typical marketing-speak. I am becoming temporarily deaf whenever I hear it.
Read it the following way: We have a reason to do it but we don't want to tell you so instead we will tell you a little bit of righteously-sounding bullshit so that most of sheep base is satisfied. Yes, that's "sheep", because you are not our customers, our customers are those companies we sell your information and your focus to.
Read it the following way: We have a reason to do it but we don't want to tell you so instead we will tell you a little bit of righteously-sounding bullshit so that most of sheep base is satisfied. Yes, that's "sheep", because you are not our customers, our customers are those companies we sell your information and your focus to.
I really don't think there are sheeps around who actually believe that. Everybody knows this is just marketing speak in a way, marketing people are expected to speak.
Or maybe, there are people who would believe it, but they have an account already. And most simple do not care. They read, they have to create an account to get the content, so they do create an account.
Or maybe, there are people who would believe it, but they have an account already. And most simple do not care. They read, they have to create an account to get the content, so they do create an account.
> Everybody knows this is just marketing speak in a way
I hate this idea that, as a society, companies are permitted to bullshit people and the onus is on the consumers to be able to parse the borderline lies from full truths. My wife used to work closely with people with moderate mental illness - you wouldn't believe the predatory scams, advertisements and "offers" they fell for.
I hate this idea that, as a society, companies are permitted to bullshit people and the onus is on the consumers to be able to parse the borderline lies from full truths. My wife used to work closely with people with moderate mental illness - you wouldn't believe the predatory scams, advertisements and "offers" they fell for.
Isn't it more like "corporate" speak? The thing that makes me want to blow my brains out is when politicians or government representatives do this on TV and the "journalist" interviewing them just sits there and nods...
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There are - they are called "children", and there are hundreds of millions of them among Instagram's user base.
Hm, true a bit, but also children are not so naive .. and those who are, would not read that text and just click and fill out until they get again, what they want.
You wouldn't believe what people can believe in. People who don't believe corporate messages are not target for corporate messages.
My guess is the reason is that they need to show they have an increasing user base and "active users" to Wall St.
No, this is their reason, just from within their distortion field. This is helping the user view photos, because the user should be logged in and using the app, the app provides the best experience and this web interface is a distraction that gets in the way of that.
Edit: I guess it wasn't sufficiently clear, the second sentence here is not my own personal opinion.
Edit: I guess it wasn't sufficiently clear, the second sentence here is not my own personal opinion.
I've been in businesses trying to sell me this view as a developer. I can almost guarantee that the developers are saying, in their head, "this is in no way helpful to our users, but I will comply because my PM told me to."
Distortion-fields aren't so powerful that they cause people with integrity to discount critical thinking. If someone can be sold on this with hand-waving, they probably lacked integrity or critical thinking from the start.
Distortion-fields aren't so powerful that they cause people with integrity to discount critical thinking. If someone can be sold on this with hand-waving, they probably lacked integrity or critical thinking from the start.
Obvious lies like these aren't meant to believed. Their purpose is preventing the follow up questions that would come if the truth was acknowledged.
No, best experience is when I do not have to open my phone if someone links me something. Best experience when I don't have to waste time creating a user and logging in.
The best experience from IG's POV.
The best experience is from a POV that doesn't intersect with IG.
So in other words Instagram claims to know how every single user wants to interact with the platform better than they themselves know, and so now users don't even get to decide for themselves.
I have two reactions to this:
1. I absolutely HATE this kind of arrogance from companies.
2. I don't believe them. I think it's far more likely they are doing this to juice their metrics, rather than honestly thinking that taking away options will make everyone like them more.
I have two reactions to this:
1. I absolutely HATE this kind of arrogance from companies.
2. I don't believe them. I think it's far more likely they are doing this to juice their metrics, rather than honestly thinking that taking away options will make everyone like them more.
Of course it's their reason. If there was any of your interest in this they would not waste half a second to tell you this with details.
Nonsense explanation means just that users' interests were not factored in the decision.
Nonsense explanation means just that users' interests were not factored in the decision.
That's not it, the web interface still works as long as you're logged in, no app needed. My guess is they are sick of scrapers and data miners. If login is needed, they can ban and the proxy hustlers will have a hard time.
FWIW, here in Sweden I can still look at feeds without being logged in.
FWIW, here in Sweden I can still look at feeds without being logged in.
They want people like me to register and increase the user count. I happen to get to an Instagram page once or twice a year following some link, look at a few pictures and quit. I remember it stopped me to scroll through pictures after a while or something like that, again to lure visitors to register. But I don't have a use case for Instagram so I won't. I already send pictures to people I care about via whatsapp.
> My guess is they are sick of scrapers and data miners. If login is needed, they can ban and the proxy hustlers will have a hard time.
As someone who's been writing integration (not nefarious!) scrapers for years, this is crap. Email accounts are free, VPNs and captcha solvers are dirt-cheap and at the end of the day, if they screw up the web version too much, the mobile apps are even easier to turn into scrapers as they usually use some kind of JSON API.
They did this for the same reason as Reddit and Facebook: - it's harder to make ad profiles for anonymous users - new users is a metric that investors love - psychological trick (I can't remember what that specific phenomenon is called) to turn lurkers into posters
As someone who's been writing integration (not nefarious!) scrapers for years, this is crap. Email accounts are free, VPNs and captcha solvers are dirt-cheap and at the end of the day, if they screw up the web version too much, the mobile apps are even easier to turn into scrapers as they usually use some kind of JSON API.
They did this for the same reason as Reddit and Facebook: - it's harder to make ad profiles for anonymous users - new users is a metric that investors love - psychological trick (I can't remember what that specific phenomenon is called) to turn lurkers into posters
Can you post images using the web interface?
If I had to guess, their account creation metrics are flattening out and some product manager had the idea of implementing this restriction to restart growth. If your performance reviews depend on growth, restrictions like this seem rational even if they're obviously anti-user to anyone outside the company.
With the underlying factor probably being that much fewer people are creating good new content given the global lockdowns.
'Cute women' are a significant part of Instagram content, and if they are indoors wearing a mask there's not much to excite the userbase with.
'Cute women' are a significant part of Instagram content, and if they are indoors wearing a mask there's not much to excite the userbase with.
"How does blocking access help people view things?"
Lieologists have discovered there's a hole in human cognition: If you say "We're doing X because of Y", human brains tend not to check Y very carefully at all.
You can almost say "To help people view photos in Instagram, we're shutting down photo sharing in Instagram." You can't get away with a lie quite that bald. But you only need a few scraggly hair plugs on that lie to get past most people most of the time, as you observe.
Lieologists have discovered there's a hole in human cognition: If you say "We're doing X because of Y", human brains tend not to check Y very carefully at all.
You can almost say "To help people view photos in Instagram, we're shutting down photo sharing in Instagram." You can't get away with a lie quite that bald. But you only need a few scraggly hair plugs on that lie to get past most people most of the time, as you observe.
"We're doing X because of coronavirus."
Yep, your argument is sound.
Yep, your argument is sound.
I'd be surprised if this is true. Instead, I read things like this as "we're not going to tell you our reasons", and I suspect most other people do too.
Well, rather than issue a lengthy explanation of why I think I'm right, I suggest this instead: Try turning the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon [1] to the forces of good, and keep an eye out for this sort of thing over the next month. Assuming that there's nothing special about what you do in the next month, the delta between the number of times you think about it in the next month vs. the amount you've thought about it in the previous month is a rough guess for the amount of times you've read a statement like this and it just passed you by with your brain not registering an objection.
If you do this honestly, betcha it's more than you think. It's something I see a lot, personally. In fact I tend to be surprised when someone public says "We're doing X because of Y" and it actually makes perfect sense. Most reasons given in the public sphere are quite garbage.
[1]: https://science.howstuffworks.com/life/inside-the-mind/human...
If you do this honestly, betcha it's more than you think. It's something I see a lot, personally. In fact I tend to be surprised when someone public says "We're doing X because of Y" and it actually makes perfect sense. Most reasons given in the public sphere are quite garbage.
[1]: https://science.howstuffworks.com/life/inside-the-mind/human...
If you're in a browser with adblockers and you're not signed in, there's not much they can do to monetize you effectively. I assume this is just a means of forcing people who use instagram in the browser to at least admit who they are so they can tie browsing to a known tracking id.
I'm honestly surprised instagram even lets people use the app in any meaningful way on desktop at all.
I'm honestly surprised instagram even lets people use the app in any meaningful way on desktop at all.
They didn't for the longest while. I'm not sure what their impetus for changing was.
To post images, I have to fire it up in emulation mode. It's ridiculous how high they try to make the walls on their garden.
Instragram has ads?
Yes? Sponsored posts.
https://business.instagram.com/advertising/
https://business.instagram.com/advertising/
I sometimes start to wonder how many of the people spewing these "we're ensuring you have the best experience by forcing you to use [some arbitrary, hated experience] exclusively" lines actually believe them.
'the best experience' among what options?
They probably believe it is the best experience within the set of options they considered, and where that set excludes the current user experience.
They probably believe it is the best experience within the set of options they considered, and where that set excludes the current user experience.
I might be underestimating their ability to lie, but I'd imagine they think the statement is true even if it's still a lie of omission (that it's not the main reason).
Since this discourages me from takin gthe time to look at the photo it does indeed provide me with a better experience. Thanks, guys!
>This is to help people view photos in Instagram and understand how to have the best experience on the platform, be part of the community, connecting and interacting with people and the things they love”
Allow me to translate:
This is because we realized we couldn't collect as much data as we would like from non-signed in users browsing on computers. As our income is derived mostly from aggregating and selling the data of our users to third party marketers we felt we could increase revenue for our shareholders by no longer allowing non-signed in users to view our platform, ensuring anyone browsing our service is providing the maximum amout of data possible.
Allow me to translate:
This is because we realized we couldn't collect as much data as we would like from non-signed in users browsing on computers. As our income is derived mostly from aggregating and selling the data of our users to third party marketers we felt we could increase revenue for our shareholders by no longer allowing non-signed in users to view our platform, ensuring anyone browsing our service is providing the maximum amout of data possible.
Based on the insane amount of telemetry that Instagram sends back even on iPhone (look at all the "engagement" domains it looks up - loads!) just to scroll up and down and look at pictures, I am guessing this is marketing speak for "we want to track you more".
Run a pi-hole and you'll be surprised (or not, depending on your cynicism).
Run a pi-hole and you'll be surprised (or not, depending on your cynicism).
That's how it sounds when someone's compensation depends on user conversion metric!
This is Doublespeak from “1984”. It’s also often used in politics like naming a tax cut for upper incomes as “Middle class tax relief”.
Or a "tax cut for all", implying it is a flat rate cut.
Seems like a case of a metric becoming a goal
You just need to translate "help people" to "help Instagram".
Not enough data cows to milk, can't have that!
Hopefully folks are connecting the dots that all this data they are giving away is really, really, valuable to Facebook and they are not getting compensated for it.
Hopefully folks are connecting the dots that all this data they are giving away is really, really, valuable to Facebook and they are not getting compensated for it.
They are using Facebook tactics and they are doomed to fail as Facebook did. Well ... I cherish for their innovations. Good bye Instagram.
> are doomed to fail as Facebook did
2.4 billion monthly active users is "doomed" now? Just because in the tech bubble Facebook is viewed negatively it doesn't mean they are not doing just fine.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/264810/number-of-monthly...
2.4 billion monthly active users is "doomed" now? Just because in the tech bubble Facebook is viewed negatively it doesn't mean they are not doing just fine.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/264810/number-of-monthly...
You can call Facebook whatever but it is not a failure. A company that has grown revenue from 2B in 2010 to 70B in 2019 cannot be considered a failure .
We'll see. Yahoo grew revenue too.
All companies from Sears to Yahoo to Favebook have peaks, troughs and then eventually fade out. Even if Facebook fades outs on the next 5-50 years, it would have done better than millions of other companies. Look at it this way - what started as an experiment in a dorm room turning into this big is the dream of every startup. Every year thousands of companies apply to YC hoping to be 1/100 to 1/1000 as successful as FAANG’s
Nobody contests that.
The negative outlook instead seems to be that since 2010, Facebook (the product, not the engineering team) has delivered little value to society.
And at this point, seems to have ossified into a form that lacks the agility and will to make major shifts.
Their current emphasis on purchasing other companies for their product pipelines, to drive business to their advertising, seems more akin to pharma majors or IBM than anything in the startup world.
The negative outlook instead seems to be that since 2010, Facebook (the product, not the engineering team) has delivered little value to society.
And at this point, seems to have ossified into a form that lacks the agility and will to make major shifts.
Their current emphasis on purchasing other companies for their product pipelines, to drive business to their advertising, seems more akin to pharma majors or IBM than anything in the startup world.
Facebook delivers value every day to billions of daily active users -- the social updates. The value varies by person but presumably it's positive value for all DAU or they would cease to be DAU.
Perhaps Facebook hasn't increased value delivered for each user for each day that much. Or has even decreased it. But the baseline is definitely "value to society" IMO
Did you mean Facebook has delivered little marginal value?
Perhaps Facebook hasn't increased value delivered for each user for each day that much. Or has even decreased it. But the baseline is definitely "value to society" IMO
Did you mean Facebook has delivered little marginal value?
I meant what I said.
> since 2010, Facebook (the product, not the engineering team) has delivered little value to society
That requires a different rebuttal than 'to a user.'
If we rewound to ~2010, froze Facebook at its then-current feature set, and had Instagram (2012), WhatsApp (2014), Oculus (2014), and the myriad of other aquhires still in existence as independent companies, society would be a better place.
> since 2010, Facebook (the product, not the engineering team) has delivered little value to society
That requires a different rebuttal than 'to a user.'
If we rewound to ~2010, froze Facebook at its then-current feature set, and had Instagram (2012), WhatsApp (2014), Oculus (2014), and the myriad of other aquhires still in existence as independent companies, society would be a better place.
> If we rewound to ~2010, froze Facebook at its then-current feature set, and had Instagram (2012), WhatsApp (2014), Oculus (2014), and the myriad of other aquhires still in existence as independent companies, society would be a better place
Sure, I can see that.
And if Facebook the product went away, society would IMO be in a worse place (until it's replaced :), because Facebook the product is delivering value every day
Sure, I can see that.
And if Facebook the product went away, society would IMO be in a worse place (until it's replaced :), because Facebook the product is delivering value every day
Facebook did not "fail."
Depends on ones measure of success.
Mine is, does this product and/or service represent a net benefit to humanity without egregious side-effects?
the answer isn’t always so clear-cut
Mine is, does this product and/or service represent a net benefit to humanity without egregious side-effects?
the answer isn’t always so clear-cut
That measure is so subjective I'd be surprised if it was ever clear cut. You could argue circles with coal, oil, FB, beer, various drugs, fancy rocks. All are double-edged swords (the handle is also a sword (and it's on fire))
Indeed not always, and there certainly can be an observer effect, but the answer re. Facebook is very clear cut.
In any case I've found it preferable to "does this corporate entity create shareholder value?", which I must confess I was suckered by some rather Austrian-school economists into accepting as a valid proxy for human advancement and/or happiness in my mid-thirties.
In any case I've found it preferable to "does this corporate entity create shareholder value?", which I must confess I was suckered by some rather Austrian-school economists into accepting as a valid proxy for human advancement and/or happiness in my mid-thirties.
Out of curiosity, why does the condition "without egregious side effects" exist? Aren't egregious side effects already factored ibto the "net benefit" calculation?
My moral compass says, don't harm individuals for the greater good.
I should add, you're not wrong to question the necessity of including the second part. It is most certainly a factor. There's a natural justice strand in the formulation of Benthamite utilitarianism (which is, broadly speaking, where I'm coming from) that reinforces an enlightened approach to individual consequences, since in the long run the absence of individual justice poisons the greater good anyway.
However that's a bit of a mouthful, and it does need surfacing because there are other formulations of utilitarianism that lead to dystopian nightmare societies, and besides, I'm rather fond of the word egregious.
However I do regret forgetting to riff on the laws of robotics in the phrasing
I should add, you're not wrong to question the necessity of including the second part. It is most certainly a factor. There's a natural justice strand in the formulation of Benthamite utilitarianism (which is, broadly speaking, where I'm coming from) that reinforces an enlightened approach to individual consequences, since in the long run the absence of individual justice poisons the greater good anyway.
However that's a bit of a mouthful, and it does need surfacing because there are other formulations of utilitarianism that lead to dystopian nightmare societies, and besides, I'm rather fond of the word egregious.
However I do regret forgetting to riff on the laws of robotics in the phrasing
Another way to say this, how does lying tell the truth? I don't understand corporations that decide to lie like this.
I noticed Facebook Messenger does this fun thing where you can open it, start to read a message and then it says "BAM--YOU MUST UPDATE". The fact they intentionally designed it this way makes me want to delete Messenger forever.
I noticed Facebook Messenger does this fun thing where you can open it, start to read a message and then it says "BAM--YOU MUST UPDATE". The fact they intentionally designed it this way makes me want to delete Messenger forever.
You should, followed by facebook. They're doing shadier stuff than that with your personal info
> How does blocking access help people view things? How does blocking access help people understand how to have the best experience?
It doesn't. Instagram isn't in it business of selling you the "best experience". It's in the business of selling your information. If you have an account ( verified by a phone number/etc ) and if you post your photos/etc, they have more information on you to sell to advertisers/government/etc than if you were anonymously browsing. Maybe you just browsed instagram on your desktop, but now since they have your phone, they may "recommend" you install their app and while you are at it, why not install facebook, etc.
It's also to cause a "network" effect. Facebook did this before where they made it difficult for you view content without logging in. So if your grandma, aunts, friends, etc wanted to see your wedding posts, they had to create an account whereas in the past they would just go to your page and see it without an account. Also, if you have an account, it incentivizes you to "participate" more. Whereas in the past you might just casually view photos and leave, now you can leave comments, subscribe, favorite, etc.
It doesn't. Instagram isn't in it business of selling you the "best experience". It's in the business of selling your information. If you have an account ( verified by a phone number/etc ) and if you post your photos/etc, they have more information on you to sell to advertisers/government/etc than if you were anonymously browsing. Maybe you just browsed instagram on your desktop, but now since they have your phone, they may "recommend" you install their app and while you are at it, why not install facebook, etc.
It's also to cause a "network" effect. Facebook did this before where they made it difficult for you view content without logging in. So if your grandma, aunts, friends, etc wanted to see your wedding posts, they had to create an account whereas in the past they would just go to your page and see it without an account. Also, if you have an account, it incentivizes you to "participate" more. Whereas in the past you might just casually view photos and leave, now you can leave comments, subscribe, favorite, etc.
It's unfortunate that a lot of businesses are now inside of Facebook and Instagram walls.
I know a number of times in recent months I'd end up on Instagram pages for different businesses. I would be scrolling to view their products and suddenly I'd get hit with the sign-up modal that wouldn't allow me to scroll further (well, technically I could if I opened the developer tools and disabled it, but that road block usually stopped me). So, I'd close their Instagram page, move on with my life, and they'd potentially lose a sale.
The same thing happened on Facebook when the page would be covered in overlays and I could barely browse the content. I'd get annoyed and leave.
There's a lot of power you're giving up when you build your online presence inside of another company. The entire user experience of your customer can drastically change at any moment, and you have little recourse aside from rebuilding your online presence from scratch.
I know a number of times in recent months I'd end up on Instagram pages for different businesses. I would be scrolling to view their products and suddenly I'd get hit with the sign-up modal that wouldn't allow me to scroll further (well, technically I could if I opened the developer tools and disabled it, but that road block usually stopped me). So, I'd close their Instagram page, move on with my life, and they'd potentially lose a sale.
The same thing happened on Facebook when the page would be covered in overlays and I could barely browse the content. I'd get annoyed and leave.
There's a lot of power you're giving up when you build your online presence inside of another company. The entire user experience of your customer can drastically change at any moment, and you have little recourse aside from rebuilding your online presence from scratch.
Exactly my experience. Actually I think it’s less irritating to block access to any image from the very first click/scroll, than to perversely let the user dive into an account and, suddenly, BAM!! acces denied!.. Because that’s really how it looks for someone who don’t have an Instagram account and is just passing by.
Walking through the city, when a shop piques your curiosity. As you step closer to the windows, a security guard approaches you and asks for your club membership. Annoyed you bugger off.
I think nobody in their right mind would do this kind of shit IRL.
I think nobody in their right mind would do this kind of shit IRL.
Some friends roped me into signing up to Instagram, so I did. I got to the sign in process and "an error occurred". I tried to login and it said "account does not exist", but I tried to re-sign up, and it said "This account already exists". I emailed them for help but they said I had to post a photo of myself holding a pad with my username on it.
Which, fair enough, but giving away my face to a faceless corporation isn't my jam. If this is how they treat their prospective customers (or rather their income -- people they make money selling data from) I'm not really interested in signing up.
Which, fair enough, but giving away my face to a faceless corporation isn't my jam. If this is how they treat their prospective customers (or rather their income -- people they make money selling data from) I'm not really interested in signing up.
Same thing happened to me, and I tried to email them about a clear bug that occurs. They wanted the same photo verification. I was very nice in the correspondence until they requested photo verification a second time, and I was so confused why they were being so incompetent about it. It's a 0 follower account that I never had access to in the first place because it instantly got disabled, why would I care? Just fix the bug...
Basically, if you try to change the username before completing the sign up workflow the app doesn’t continue to the next page and the account gets disabled. Judging by your experience they seemingly haven't fixed it still. I emailed them in October 2019 about it, pretty sad.
Their final message to me was "We can’t give you access to this account or continue to process your request because we haven’t received an acceptable image to verify account ownership." Thanks for nothing, Facebook.
Basically, if you try to change the username before completing the sign up workflow the app doesn’t continue to the next page and the account gets disabled. Judging by your experience they seemingly haven't fixed it still. I emailed them in October 2019 about it, pretty sad.
Their final message to me was "We can’t give you access to this account or continue to process your request because we haven’t received an acceptable image to verify account ownership." Thanks for nothing, Facebook.
It blows my mind that people still use Facebook products. I disconnected in like... idk 2014? 2015? And never looked back.
The only facebook product I still use is oculus. I am rather curious what their software is doing. At a glance it seems innocent, but I’m not so naive to think anything facebook does is innocent.
https://www.reddit.com/r/oculus/comments/4da3r5/oculus_home_...
https://www.reddit.com/r/oculus/comments/4da3r5/oculus_home_...
That reddit thread was pretty disappointing. I was expecting some analysis of the contents of the network calls. It's also around four years old.
Since I have trouble believing Facebook isn't gathering telemetry from Oculus users, do you know of any more recent attempts to see what they're doing?
Since I have trouble believing Facebook isn't gathering telemetry from Oculus users, do you know of any more recent attempts to see what they're doing?
Social media platform is not an operating system. You can't just decide and switch. If you delete your account, you're missing out on updates from your friends who all are still there. Doing this you're only hurting yourself, not corporations.
It's unpopular amongst "hackers" to devalidate the use of FB products in this way.
For better or worse, that's apparent from this.
For better or worse, that's apparent from this.
I think the unpopular opinion here is "I don't find value, thus there is no value." When, in reality, many people do find a value. Somewhere.
Heck, I post maybe once a year on Facebook. It's how my in-laws communicate, so that's where I have to go if I want to interact with that part of my social graph. It has a value (however small), even if I wished it didn't.
Heck, I post maybe once a year on Facebook. It's how my in-laws communicate, so that's where I have to go if I want to interact with that part of my social graph. It has a value (however small), even if I wished it didn't.
I see what you're saying, but given how addictive FB is, and how much advertisement they use, you're kind of giving them the upper hand by playing neutral.
For instance, I never go to Walmart (but sometimes do). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=repxFQXVsHc
For instance, I never go to Walmart (but sometimes do). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=repxFQXVsHc
Your personal experience is not universal.
Glad you shared this experience as mine is very similar. I made an account successfully, I only used my account to follow artists I enjoyed, hours later I received an email notifying me that my account was deactivated and to reactivate it I would need to send them a picture of myself holding up a piece of paper with the ID code presented in the email.
I tried emailing back for more information as to why I was deactivated (since I did nothing wrong, unless following people without posting is wrong?) and all they could regurgitate was the shpeel that I had to send them a picture of myself with the code in order for them to help me.
Long story short, I will never use Instagram.
I tried emailing back for more information as to why I was deactivated (since I did nothing wrong, unless following people without posting is wrong?) and all they could regurgitate was the shpeel that I had to send them a picture of myself with the code in order for them to help me.
Long story short, I will never use Instagram.
This happened to me too. I suspect the reason is that I used the email address instagram.[a few random letters]@mydomain.com. I'm guessing it triggered their bot detection.
If I were to do this, I'd just remove the "instagram." bit, and just map [1 set of random letters] -> "Instagram" somewhere.
I wonder if companies selling their users' email addresses don't already filter out such personalized addresses anyway, so e.g. Instagram would filter out email addresses out containing "instagram", "ig" or "gram" before selling the data (or to corporate-speak it, "share it with third parties to enhance our customers' experience").
I wonder if companies selling their users' email addresses don't already filter out such personalized addresses anyway, so e.g. Instagram would filter out email addresses out containing "instagram", "ig" or "gram" before selling the data (or to corporate-speak it, "share it with third parties to enhance our customers' experience").
Disclaimer: no affiliation with IG
This sounds like a _very_ unusual experience. Clearly millions (billions?) of people create Instagram accounts with no issues. Why not just create a different account?
> If this is how they treat their prospective customers...
You certainly aren't a customer, which might explain the lack of priority. :)
This sounds like a _very_ unusual experience. Clearly millions (billions?) of people create Instagram accounts with no issues. Why not just create a different account?
> If this is how they treat their prospective customers...
You certainly aren't a customer, which might explain the lack of priority. :)
I had a similar experience. Tried to create an account, but it gave me an error, so I tried again, and it said the account already exists. Clicked on forgot password because I didn't know what the password was, and it said the account was banned for violating the ToS. My theory is that it's because I tried to create an account without linking it to Facebook, so it "accidentally" threw an error, hoping I would create a facebook linked account. Twitter does something similar, where they say a phone number is optional, but they'll immediately lock your new account and say that a phone number is the only way to verify you aren't a bot.
I don't think it's an accident that these high-value tech companies regularly have "errors" when you try to create an account using a method that gives them less access to personal data than other signup methods.
I don't think it's an accident that these high-value tech companies regularly have "errors" when you try to create an account using a method that gives them less access to personal data than other signup methods.
> Twitter does something similar, where they say a phone number is optional, but they'll immediately lock your new account and say that a phone number is the only way to verify you aren't a bot.
Is this recent? I signed up for a Twitter account in late 2017, even used a twitter@mydomain.com custom email address for it, and I have never been forced to add my phone number. Twitter still doesn't have it.
Is this recent? I signed up for a Twitter account in late 2017, even used a twitter@mydomain.com custom email address for it, and I have never been forced to add my phone number. Twitter still doesn't have it.
There are some situations I have been able to pindown for when Instagram doesn’t like you. Two of which are not linking to a facebook account and using a personal domain (instead of gmail, outlook etc). Also instagram really hates it if the email contains insta@domain in any form or manner. Also you will have to hand over your phone number. No exceptions!
Weird, I created an extra account earlier this year and didn't need to associate a phone number or FB account with it.
It’s not. I’ve had a similar experience, and I walked away.
Instagram is everything poisonous about Facebook’s values and platform and practices, distilled. They get nothing from me except a temporary email address, a proxy IP, and a false user-agent string.
Instagram is everything poisonous about Facebook’s values and platform and practices, distilled. They get nothing from me except a temporary email address, a proxy IP, and a false user-agent string.
I'm going to gander a wild guess and say the combination of temporary email address, proxy IP, and false UA string are likely to trip up fake account detection ML algorithms.
The UA string is real, just misleading. The other two resources aren’t public throwaways, the domain and source addresses belong to me, or a version of me (as much as IANA allocated resources can “belong”) and otherwise appear normal, but are only used for traffic to untrustworthy shitweasels.
It’s not impossible, but it is unlikely that it looks like a bot.
I figured it was actually the other way around, or at least a slightly different shade of things; not so much that it looked like a fake account, more than it looked like someone they couldn’t correlate to any other identity and therefore has no consumer surveillance value, ergo I can either fill in the blanks, or fuck off. Whatever the truth of it, I chose the latter
It’s not impossible, but it is unlikely that it looks like a bot.
I figured it was actually the other way around, or at least a slightly different shade of things; not so much that it looked like a fake account, more than it looked like someone they couldn’t correlate to any other identity and therefore has no consumer surveillance value, ergo I can either fill in the blanks, or fuck off. Whatever the truth of it, I chose the latter
This can happen if you create an account with a username that has "disallowed" words. It's happened to me with usernames that end with "dotcom" or "_com".
I had this experience when I was working with the Facebook Ad Manager.
They arbitrarily blocked my @domain account while my ads were running. They asked me to submit IDs and stuff but haven't heard back in 2 weeks. No other way to contact support except wait.
I am not sure what flagged my account but I wouldn't be surprised if they have significantly lowered the threshold for threat detection in an election year (especially after the scandals uncovered from 2016).
Definitely terrible from a customer experience PoV.
They arbitrarily blocked my @domain account while my ads were running. They asked me to submit IDs and stuff but haven't heard back in 2 weeks. No other way to contact support except wait.
I am not sure what flagged my account but I wouldn't be surprised if they have significantly lowered the threshold for threat detection in an election year (especially after the scandals uncovered from 2016).
Definitely terrible from a customer experience PoV.
Oh yeah, facebook is the worst, someone signed up using my email address (they don't do verification of email addresses), I get so much spam ..... however there is no way to contact facebook without a facebook account - no email address, no contact form, nothing - their world view is terribly inward looking
Hmm - could you reset the password on the account, and then delete it?
(Personally I'd only be comfortable doing this if this was still a very new account)
(Personally I'd only be comfortable doing this if this was still a very new account)
Well .... I did reset the password, created a temp gmail account, reassigned the contact email to the new email address then deleted the gmail account (I didn't want to mess with his content) .....
But facebook never forgets, even though I deleted my email address from the account I continue to get spam emails from facebook wondering why I've stopped using 'my' account and encouraging me to come back into the fold
But facebook never forgets, even though I deleted my email address from the account I continue to get spam emails from facebook wondering why I've stopped using 'my' account and encouraging me to come back into the fold
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Anecdotally, I was never able to complete signup for Instagram, for similar reasons.
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I tried three different email addresses (aliases, really) and had the same problem with all of them.
same thing happened to me except I didn't bother going through support. I dug a little more a few years later and it turns out someone had put my email address in their account although they had signed up and logged in via phone number so it didn't matter that they didn't have access to the email associated with the account.
I was able to take over the account since my email was associated with it. I wiped the pictures, deleted the account. signed up again with my own mobile number and email, setup 2-factor so it couldn't happen again and then deleted the app.
I was able to take over the account since my email was associated with it. I wiped the pictures, deleted the account. signed up again with my own mobile number and email, setup 2-factor so it couldn't happen again and then deleted the app.
That sounds like an unnecessarily aggressive way to handle that. It certainly could have been an honest mistake on the part of the user who owned that account. Why not just change the email address on the account?
If you signed up for gmail or similar early, then dumbasses of the world use your email address as 'their email' dozens of times a day for random internet accounts because it's also their name, and they don't understand or don't care that it isn't their email address.
It gets tiring fast and services don't deal with this usecase that well other than 'forget password'. That guy was the initial asshole to signup using an email address that wasn't theirs.
It gets tiring fast and services don't deal with this usecase that well other than 'forget password'. That guy was the initial asshole to signup using an email address that wasn't theirs.
People don't seem to understand just how common this problem is with any sort of initial.lastname@gmail address. It is insane to me that so many major big name companies do ZERO email verification on signups and just start spamming me with with garbage every time some idiot uses my email address and expect me to "unsubscribe" to something I never subscribed to in the first place.
I've had this happen to me, getting emails about credit score applications and u-haul rentals and whatnot. I can't even contact many of these companies to fix it except creating an account which I'm obviously not going to do.
Oh my yes! I had an early beta gmail account. From when you couldn't just sign up but had to be invited by another user.
so my email address is very simple. I have someone from almost every English speaking country who regularly uses my email address for all things mundane, profane, inane and urbane.
I used to respond to each and every one if possible, politely asking them to remove me from the list, stop putting my email down on whatever forms they were filling out or to tell the person they got the email address from to use their own or be more careful when filling it out. It's been going on so long and gotten so bad that I just can't anymore.
examples of things I have received mistakenly in my email that were clearly the result of someone entering them in a form or writing the down to be used by someone else.
Job interview confirmations for fields I am not and have never been involved with
letters from grandma
plane ticket, concert ticket, train ticket, parking ticket and other types of ticket confirmation and notifications.
boating licenses
requests to accept changes to architectural plans for a house
lease and housing agreements
notices to appear in court
electronic receipts of every sort
prescription drug receipts
confidential internal company information
and more.
so my email address is very simple. I have someone from almost every English speaking country who regularly uses my email address for all things mundane, profane, inane and urbane.
I used to respond to each and every one if possible, politely asking them to remove me from the list, stop putting my email down on whatever forms they were filling out or to tell the person they got the email address from to use their own or be more careful when filling it out. It's been going on so long and gotten so bad that I just can't anymore.
examples of things I have received mistakenly in my email that were clearly the result of someone entering them in a form or writing the down to be used by someone else.
Job interview confirmations for fields I am not and have never been involved with
letters from grandma
plane ticket, concert ticket, train ticket, parking ticket and other types of ticket confirmation and notifications.
boating licenses
requests to accept changes to architectural plans for a house
lease and housing agreements
notices to appear in court
electronic receipts of every sort
prescription drug receipts
confidential internal company information
and more.
This may or may not be relevant:
>Throwaway accounts are ok for sensitive information, but please don't create accounts routinely. HN is a community—users should have an identity that others can relate to.
>Throwaway accounts are ok for sensitive information, but please don't create accounts routinely. HN is a community—users should have an identity that others can relate to.
what is my identity id for me to decide and not for you to claim. my identity on HN is my messages here, nothing else. if you need more than that you are welcome to ask and we can establish another identity outside this platform
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It was the second or third time someone had used my email for Instagram.
The same thing happened to me. And I was trying to sign up/log in to Instagram through Facebook. Why am I allowed to log in to and use my Facebook account but not allowed to sign up for Instagram using my Facebook account? If they thought I was a bot or fraudulent user then surely they'd have the same concern about my Facebook account? It doesn't make any sense.
Had the same problems, ultimately swayed me away from signing up at all.
anecdotal, but I tried signing up for FB (not IG) from incognito chrome on linux, then didn't set any information or add friends, and they disabled my account less than a week later
went through 'upload a drivers license' process, no luck, no explanation
went through 'upload a drivers license' process, no luck, no explanation
The whole point of Instagram is giving away your face to a faceless corporation.
No it's not. I know hundreds of photographers who use it to share photos of landscapes, models, and other things and have never posted a picture of themselves.
I think Facebook was asking you take a picture of your state issued ID at one point to prove you are you, if you had run into account issues. I’m not sure if they do that anymore.
You are not a customer. You are a money maker. You are a product.
We are the subject. Product is the data extracted out of us.
I think they said that
My dad had the same problems trying to create an Instagram account recently, seeming to fail for various reasons and then later the account might appear to have been created and instantly disabled. He tried a number of perfectly normal email addresses, on different domains including gmail, on different IPs (home, work), different browsers including without extensions and such.
Similar situation,a bit different: I had an user agent activated on my laptop (yeah, I wanted to create an Insta account from my laptop)and after 3 failed attempt my account was blocked for shady interaction. I had to contact the customer support and send them a picture with me with a code number they gave me. Yes...
Similar story. I used a real-life name/surname (just not my real one), matched with a similar real email. I never got in. I never bothered. Now when I see (before COVID) people on the train tapping like junkies on the "stories" I smirk and think how lucky I was to avoid this mindfuck.
You being entertained on the train by judging people on their phones sounds hardly more valuable as a hobby than them being entertained by judging people in instagram stories.
>You being entertained on the train by judging people on their phones sounds hardly more valuable as a hobby than them being entertained by judging people in instagram stories.
The train entertainment is likely something which happens in passing, while social media is often a behavioral addiction. Framing two activities with such disparate levels of engagement and probable frequency as both 'hobbies' masks this fact.
I think the parent's condescending outlook is unhelpful, but I agree with them that they dodged a bullet. The increased value they experience lies in what they do with the time they've saved, which is unlikely to be fully consumed by judging people on the train.
The train entertainment is likely something which happens in passing, while social media is often a behavioral addiction. Framing two activities with such disparate levels of engagement and probable frequency as both 'hobbies' masks this fact.
I think the parent's condescending outlook is unhelpful, but I agree with them that they dodged a bullet. The increased value they experience lies in what they do with the time they've saved, which is unlikely to be fully consumed by judging people on the train.
> You being entertained on the train by judging people on their phones sounds hardly more valuable as a hobby than them being entertained by judging people in instagram stories.
There's a substantial difference between being on the sidelines vs. in the line of fire WRT the firehose of propaganda.
There's a substantial difference between being on the sidelines vs. in the line of fire WRT the firehose of propaganda.
How efficient and reliable is the verification with a face holding a card either ways. I would watermark it all over with the Instagram logo to make sure it isn't being used outside of instagram context with sophisticated digital enhancement tools.
Yep, this happens if you trigger the bot detection.
i had the same thing happen. if i remember correctly the [email protected] plus signing on the web made it throw error.
I hate it even more when they try telling me that "that is not a valid email address" - welcome to RFC5322, people...
https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5322
https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5322
I hate when sites don’t accept + modified email addresses.
As someone working to launch an app, this isn't something that I was terribly concerned with handling before launch, but I now have a question.
Is the best way to handle this to allow the '+' symbol in email addresses, but verify that the underlying email address hasn't already been registered so that one email address still can't create multiple accounts?
So if you sign up with [email protected], should I check the prefix ("covercash") with the domain ("gmail.com") and make sure there aren't any matches already registered like [email protected] or [email protected]?
Is the best way to handle this to allow the '+' symbol in email addresses, but verify that the underlying email address hasn't already been registered so that one email address still can't create multiple accounts?
So if you sign up with [email protected], should I check the prefix ("covercash") with the domain ("gmail.com") and make sure there aren't any matches already registered like [email protected] or [email protected]?
No. That is super hostile to your users, and besides the use of + as recipient delimiter is a convention, not a standardised behaviour.
You will get false positives, and you will get irate users, often rejecting perhaps some of your most promising early adopters.
See also: case sensitivity in the left-hand part of an address.
You will get false positives, and you will get irate users, often rejecting perhaps some of your most promising early adopters.
See also: case sensitivity in the left-hand part of an address.
>so that one email address still can't create multiple accounts?
You can not do that. You have no way of knowing how my mail server handles username portions of the address. Maybe bob+123@ is the same account as bob@, maybe it isn't. It is entirely up to the mail server to decide what it wants to do with it. And likewise, you have no way to know any other username portions are not the same account. I can set my email server up to use "x" as a delimiter, and make bobx1 and bobx2 both go to bob if that's what I want.
You can not do that. You have no way of knowing how my mail server handles username portions of the address. Maybe bob+123@ is the same account as bob@, maybe it isn't. It is entirely up to the mail server to decide what it wants to do with it. And likewise, you have no way to know any other username portions are not the same account. I can set my email server up to use "x" as a delimiter, and make bobx1 and bobx2 both go to bob if that's what I want.
You should just treat them as two different email addresses. On some providers this is in fact what they are, and there is no real point in doing otherwise because anybody who wants to create multiple accounts in that way could just create multiple email addresses instead.
With all the face filters and deep fakes these days why didn’t you just send some fake photo?
I believe any website that is behind the walled garden should be deindexed by Google and other search engines. Whether it's a newspaper, Q/A websites, social media, or anything else. It's only fair. When users search for something, they should only get results of web pages whose content is accessible to all without having to sign up for an account.
Ideally Google would have a search filter that lets you block paywalled sites from your search, if that's what you want.
You've got it backwards I think, google should offer you a search filter to include paywalled sites while they are by default excluded.
The vast majority of the time, someone searching something on the internet isn't willing to pay to see it.
The vast majority of the time, someone searching something on the internet isn't willing to pay to see it.
I've wondered recently if this simple (but powerful) feature would be enough of a differentiator for a search engine challenger to gain serious market share.
Imagine if Duck Duck Go offered that by default?
Imagine if Duck Duck Go offered that by default?
There are several such differentiators:
- exclude walled gardens
- exclude sites with ads and/or ecommerce
- exclude sites with tracking
- exclude sites with fixed headers
- allow users to have personal blocklists
As a bonus, if you make a new search engine offering such options, existing search engines will be afraid to copy them.
- exclude walled gardens
- exclude sites with ads and/or ecommerce
- exclude sites with tracking
- exclude sites with fixed headers
- allow users to have personal blocklists
As a bonus, if you make a new search engine offering such options, existing search engines will be afraid to copy them.
Google should be returning the highest quality results. If thats a paywalled newspaper, it should not be excluded.
However, I do think some kind of tag, similar to [AD] could appear next to the result, warning you not to click it, [PW] or [LW] for paywall and loginwall.
However, I do think some kind of tag, similar to [AD] could appear next to the result, warning you not to click it, [PW] or [LW] for paywall and loginwall.
I don't consider anything that's pay-walled to be high quality. If I can't read it, it has no value to me.
What do you consider high-quality?
If I continue to run into the same paywall, I would consider buying into it. If I bought content, I would want it to show up in search. I wouldnt know I want to buy it, if I dont run into it first.
Then Google should work on a way to connect your purchase with their system or give you ability to inform them you’ve purchased a subscription so that only you get to see search results from that paywalled website, and not others.
In that case they should return book results also, which are usually the highest quality.
a result is low quality if i can't view the content of it.
I stopped using Quora when I kept getting interrupted to sign in/up when not logged in. I did the same for Pinterest. I had deleted and wiped my LinkedIn account for a long time but recently re-activated it for a job search. I'll delete it again when I land a job.
Reddit is getting there but not so annoying that I will stop using it. I get the most value out of Reddit but there are so many ways to get information and/or waste time that something else, digital or otherwise, will replace it.
I imagine people like me are a vanishingly small portion of users or potential users or the increased data/tracking from forcing accounts and logins is worth the lost users but it makes me sad.
But then I see counter examples like Youtube. You can browse all day long without logging in, click through to a video without getting prompted to login etc. Is it just different philosophies (hard to imagine given how much Google is reliant on data and ads) or is it different business practices?
Reddit is getting there but not so annoying that I will stop using it. I get the most value out of Reddit but there are so many ways to get information and/or waste time that something else, digital or otherwise, will replace it.
I imagine people like me are a vanishingly small portion of users or potential users or the increased data/tracking from forcing accounts and logins is worth the lost users but it makes me sad.
But then I see counter examples like Youtube. You can browse all day long without logging in, click through to a video without getting prompted to login etc. Is it just different philosophies (hard to imagine given how much Google is reliant on data and ads) or is it different business practices?
Oh yeah. I really liked Quora in the beginning. There were some good answers to the questions there. Then it got worse, and when it started prompting me to login, I bailed and I've never gone to Quora ever again.
YouTube is pretty annoying when not logged it too. It constantly pops up a "you're signed out of YouTube" box that obscures part of the video until I close it. On every single video.
Maybe if viewing a single video of Anthony Hopkins (for example) didn't replace half of my feed with Anthony Hopkins videos, I might be more inclined to not open it in a private tab (logged out), but alas.
But hey, at least you can watch the video. That's more than I say for half the news and image sites out there anymore.
Maybe if viewing a single video of Anthony Hopkins (for example) didn't replace half of my feed with Anthony Hopkins videos, I might be more inclined to not open it in a private tab (logged out), but alas.
But hey, at least you can watch the video. That's more than I say for half the news and image sites out there anymore.
I think this is just a sign of a declining platform desperate to juice the stats. New signups falling? Just force everyone to log in to view content.
I keep a txt file with a list of the subreddits I’m interest in it. I delete all my posts and my account every few months and create a new one and join the subreddits in the file. If reddit required an email like discord, I would absolutely stop using it.
Reddit provides a way to streamline this for you - I use old.reddit.com so it might not be the same in the new UI so YMMV on the specifics.
While logged in, click the subreddits dropdown and click the "Edit Subscriptions" link, it takes you to https://www.reddit.com/subreddits/ - on the right side is "multireddit of your subscriptions" -- this is a URL string of all your subreddits, just save the URL. When you make a new account, click the URL again and subscribe to them on your new account.
While logged in, click the subreddits dropdown and click the "Edit Subscriptions" link, it takes you to https://www.reddit.com/subreddits/ - on the right side is "multireddit of your subscriptions" -- this is a URL string of all your subreddits, just save the URL. When you make a new account, click the URL again and subscribe to them on your new account.
As a photographer, I urge all other passionate photographers to get off of Instagram. It's more important now than ever to be the authority of your own content.
I know it's not as fancy but just start by hosting your own simple blog.
I made an effort to build my own Instagram like section on my site just to host my own images. It even has a web assembly lib that scales the images client-side so I don't have to deal with image processing and uploads directly to S3.
https://morphic.pro/snaps
The code is open for others to see how I did it. https://github.com/MorphicPro/morphic.pro
I know it's not as fancy but just start by hosting your own simple blog.
I made an effort to build my own Instagram like section on my site just to host my own images. It even has a web assembly lib that scales the images client-side so I don't have to deal with image processing and uploads directly to S3.
https://morphic.pro/snaps
The code is open for others to see how I did it. https://github.com/MorphicPro/morphic.pro
How do you handle the bandwidth costs? These are probably a negligible proportion of the costs at the scale of an Instagram, but hosting providers still have a big profit cut at smaller scales.
For example, I could host all my images directly on my Linode, but the cheapest Linode has only 1 TB of outbound transfer a month (for $5), and over quota you're actually charged more than that, $10 / TB. That comes with only 25 GB of storage. They'd also probably be pretty slow for most of my visitors, since they're hosted on a single server somewhere in California.
If you want faster distribution around the country and globe, you might consider S3... that same 1 TB of data out is going to cost you $90 / month.
Meanwhile, it's clear the REAL costs are not that high. Flickr Pro is a mere $5 a month, with the same high quality (uncompressed) photos, and a global CDN. You can store an unlimited number of pictures with Flickr Pro. This is already way cheaper and faster than anything I can set up on my own, as far as I know, and SmugMug is still making money off of this, presumably, enough to cover their free tier.
For example, I could host all my images directly on my Linode, but the cheapest Linode has only 1 TB of outbound transfer a month (for $5), and over quota you're actually charged more than that, $10 / TB. That comes with only 25 GB of storage. They'd also probably be pretty slow for most of my visitors, since they're hosted on a single server somewhere in California.
If you want faster distribution around the country and globe, you might consider S3... that same 1 TB of data out is going to cost you $90 / month.
Meanwhile, it's clear the REAL costs are not that high. Flickr Pro is a mere $5 a month, with the same high quality (uncompressed) photos, and a global CDN. You can store an unlimited number of pictures with Flickr Pro. This is already way cheaper and faster than anything I can set up on my own, as far as I know, and SmugMug is still making money off of this, presumably, enough to cover their free tier.
I've been slowly piecing something like this together for myself using jekyll. I'm not familiar with the tools you're using, but the demo site looks very nice. Good job!
Are there other examples of turnkey self-deployed sites like this?
Are there other examples of turnkey self-deployed sites like this?
I'm actively developing my personal site which is built with elixir and phoenix. That said if you are looking for an out of the box solution I would stick with simple and go with a static site generator like you mentioned or possibly Wordpress.
Also this is one of the big reasons I really hope activity pub takes off and people start to incorp it directly into their own sites.
I think it's actually just some javascript that prevents clicking links from a profile to the individual photos.
Deep-linking still works without an account, so you can just right click a photo, copy the url and paste it into the URL bar.
Deep-linking still works without an account, so you can just right click a photo, copy the url and paste it into the URL bar.
You're right, I noticed this recently as well. Clicking the photo brings up the sign-up modal. However, middle clicking to open in a new tab views the photo.
I begrudgingly started an insta a few days ago. I am a photographer and I have resisted for so long. But this isolation just made me want to stay connected to my classmates and other photographer friends.
I have to say, as a photo sharing platform, instagram is awful. Can't upload photos from desktop, no native iPad app (WTF?), and whatever compression they use to display my photos seems to really mess with the quality (not really noticeable from a phone, but from a desktop, yikes).
It's great to be able to keep up with people in a more meaningful way, and I did attend a pretty cool live IGTV session, but all in all I don't really like it.
And as others have mentioned, I think, you can just middle-click on a post to open it in a new tab and it wont ask for a login.
I have to say, as a photo sharing platform, instagram is awful. Can't upload photos from desktop, no native iPad app (WTF?), and whatever compression they use to display my photos seems to really mess with the quality (not really noticeable from a phone, but from a desktop, yikes).
It's great to be able to keep up with people in a more meaningful way, and I did attend a pretty cool live IGTV session, but all in all I don't really like it.
And as others have mentioned, I think, you can just middle-click on a post to open it in a new tab and it wont ask for a login.
> Can't upload photos from desktop
Yes, you can. Open dev tools, set it to mobile, and set it to android. A "+" button will pop up and work fine.
Yes, you can. Open dev tools, set it to mobile, and set it to android. A "+" button will pop up and work fine.
Well I spoke too soon. Initially I did see the controls pop up on the bottom, but I just resized my browser window, and now for the life of me cannot get them to show up again. Oh well. I'll keep messing with it.
Nice! That does work. Thanks for that.
I'm still a little baffled as to why they don't just allow that on the desktop site, though.
I'm still a little baffled as to why they don't just allow that on the desktop site, though.
Because Instagram isn't really intended for sharing your DLSR-shot, desktop-processed labour-of-love photo. The compression, rescaling and colour mismanagement they apply to uploads should tell you that.
It's quite possibly the worst way on the Web to present photos-as-art yet photographers keep signing up to it.
It's quite possibly the worst way on the Web to present photos-as-art yet photographers keep signing up to it.
Meanwhile, Twitter, also not designed for this purpose, actually stopped recompressing (jpeg) files when viewed at the highest quality. https://twitter.com/NolanOBrien/status/1204557498990002176
I was actually pretty impressed by this change from a non-photo site.
I was actually pretty impressed by this change from a non-photo site.
I would put my money on they don't want to have to support server side image processing. Since their mobile apps all scale images client side its a huge cost savings vs having to support that server side.
... and this is why those who'd seen the fall of geocities, the demise of myspace, the slaughter of tumblr, keep their own website under their own domain name, either as the canonical copy or as a backup along with the social media streams.
Social media can be useful, but one should never have their content -at least those that are not absolutely ephemeral -, exclusively on a single one of them.
You should all do the same. Start here: https://indieweb.org/Getting_Started
_Trouble is, it's becoming hard to maintain cross-posting or even just copying your own stuff from silos, which I find outrageous._
Social media can be useful, but one should never have their content -at least those that are not absolutely ephemeral -, exclusively on a single one of them.
You should all do the same. Start here: https://indieweb.org/Getting_Started
_Trouble is, it's becoming hard to maintain cross-posting or even just copying your own stuff from silos, which I find outrageous._
And Twitter requires a phone number for "verification" shortly after creating a new account without one.
Stop using this trash.
Stop using this trash.
Yeah, Twitter is never going to get my number, like ever. anybody remembers when Twitter announced in September last year that they would remove "account that didn't post enough"? WTF was that?
But Instragram/Facebook,Pinterest and co simply hate the web. I mean they like it when it comes down to user acquisition but their goal is to make you download their app. If they could do away with the web they would. They are no better than Microsoft Balmer era.
But Instragram/Facebook,Pinterest and co simply hate the web. I mean they like it when it comes down to user acquisition but their goal is to make you download their app. If they could do away with the web they would. They are no better than Microsoft Balmer era.
> But Instragram/Facebook,Pinterest and co simply hate the web. I mean they like it when it comes down to user acquisition but their goal is to make you download their app. If they could do away with the web they would. They are no better than Microsoft Balmer era.
The web is the real casualty of mobile taking over, more so than the desktop, IMHO.
There was a minute between proprietary mobile app dominance and proprietary desktop app dominance where everything new and shiny was a web service first and foremost.
During that minute everyone was able participate in all the new shiny things, regardless of what operating system or type of device they used - they just needed a standards-compliant web browser, and nothing ever required your phone number to register, except financial services I guess.
I wish the average person understood how liberating and important that state of affairs is for everyone. Based on the few debates I've had on this subject with less technical folks, as long as whatever the average person is carrying in their pocket is supported and they can do/consume what they want today they dgaf how much the walls are closing in on them in the process.
The web is the real casualty of mobile taking over, more so than the desktop, IMHO.
There was a minute between proprietary mobile app dominance and proprietary desktop app dominance where everything new and shiny was a web service first and foremost.
During that minute everyone was able participate in all the new shiny things, regardless of what operating system or type of device they used - they just needed a standards-compliant web browser, and nothing ever required your phone number to register, except financial services I guess.
I wish the average person understood how liberating and important that state of affairs is for everyone. Based on the few debates I've had on this subject with less technical folks, as long as whatever the average person is carrying in their pocket is supported and they can do/consume what they want today they dgaf how much the walls are closing in on them in the process.
Instagram is stupid. On desktop, you cannot upload photos unless you fake being an iPhone with developer tools, I kid you not, go ahead and try. Just change the user agent and the screen size with Chrome dev tools and the upload photos menus will show up.
I don't understand this, why in the world would they prevent their users from uploading photos from the their laptops?
These weird UX choices never made sense to me. If you don't want users to do anything in a browser, then just remove your website, and force them to download your app, problem solved.
I don't understand this, why in the world would they prevent their users from uploading photos from the their laptops?
These weird UX choices never made sense to me. If you don't want users to do anything in a browser, then just remove your website, and force them to download your app, problem solved.
Your laptop probably doesn't have gps location data they can exfiltrate.
I thought this had already been happening for quite some time?
In my experience, I was no longer able to browse without an account on either my laptop or my mobile device for a few months now
In my experience, I was no longer able to browse without an account on either my laptop or my mobile device for a few months now
Correct. This is not a new behavior. Also, did the author check for any kind of cookie or fingerprinting? I would guess Instagram is much more likely to allow some sample viewing, and by clearing all stored data, you can get another quantity of samples. I would have tried that first before the user agent.
A more accurate title would probably be (this is conjecture) "Instagram expands loginwall to other countries, eg Brazil"
A more accurate title would probably be (this is conjecture) "Instagram expands loginwall to other countries, eg Brazil"
Tested with different browsers, computers, connections, even cities.
Another user here thought the post was about that scrolling limit that's in place for a few months now. That's different. I wasn't able, previous to publication, to confirm if this is happening in other countries, but here in hacker news there are more users reporting the same issue.
Another user here thought the post was about that scrolling limit that's in place for a few months now. That's different. I wasn't able, previous to publication, to confirm if this is happening in other countries, but here in hacker news there are more users reporting the same issue.
Im still not convinced that Instagram hasnt figured out a way to identify you and your friends, and has decided theyve used up their trial images.
But maybe you are right, maybe you are part of some kind of A/B test to see if an immediate loginwall, with no trial or sample, increases or decreases sign ups.
But maybe you are right, maybe you are part of some kind of A/B test to see if an immediate loginwall, with no trial or sample, increases or decreases sign ups.
It's a possibility, and I shouldn't doubt Facebook's reach. Anyway, these friends and relatives I've asked for help they all have Instagram accounts and use the app regularly, always logged-in, and yet that popup showed up in their first attempt to see a picture logged off.
I would expect all those people to have a cookie or equivalent tracker saying "this person has been to instagram before"
Author here. Previously, it only happened when I was using a VPN, even if its server was in Brazil, where I live.
I also checked with friends and relatives living in another cities in Brazil. They also hit that form when trying to access photos unlogged.
I also checked with friends and relatives living in another cities in Brazil. They also hit that form when trying to access photos unlogged.
Yep, this happened at least five months ago.
https://thenextweb.com/socialmedia/2019/10/28/instagram-now-...
https://thenextweb.com/socialmedia/2019/10/28/instagram-now-...
That is a different issue. What The Next Web reported is when you scroll down a bit and Instagram shows the login/register form. Now, no matter what photo or video, even if it's the first one, it asks you to login.
I don't have an instagram account and just Googled "most popular instagram accounts" and I was able to look at the top 3. Though I did scroll down far enough to hit a "you need to login to view more" wall. Maybe it's a regional thing? I'm in the US here.
And it's Katy Perry, Nike and Miley Cyrus, just in case you were curious. (at least according to the first result from Google)
And it's Katy Perry, Nike and Miley Cyrus, just in case you were curious. (at least according to the first result from Google)
Just tried with my own Instagram in incognito in desktop. I could scroll the grid for a few wheel-scrolls before being asked to log in. Clicking any image yielded a log-in prompt.
This isn't how the open web is supposed to work. (nor is IG's suppression of hyperlinks to a single link within the bio.)
This isn't how the open web is supposed to work. (nor is IG's suppression of hyperlinks to a single link within the bio.)
This isn't how the open web is supposed to work. (nor is IG's suppression of hyperlinks to a single link within the bio.)
Instagram is owned by Facebook. No one associated with those organisations is interested in an open web, whether they're shareholders, employees, or users.
Instagram is owned by Facebook. No one associated with those organisations is interested in an open web, whether they're shareholders, employees, or users.
[deleted]
I wonder if this will reduce their traffic in any way. At least personally I know I'll never make an account, so I kind of like that this keeps me from procrastinating and browsing the site. The UI is so clunky anyways that I would love to see a better app take over.
Note: there are some unofficial IG clients, without paywalls, using the API (however they probably try to kill them when they get too big).
Example: https://igdig.com/
Example: https://igdig.com/
Note, instagram is pretty trivial to scrape. I’m guessing that is the real target of these changes: removing unauthorized apis.
Yet another reason to move away from Instagram. I’m toying with using RSSHub + ttrss to get content from my favourite Instagram accounts in my RSS reader. I hope this doesn’t break that.
Smart! I will have to look into a solution like this. I want to follow all the artists and creators on Instagram but I don't want to be swamped with all the other inanity.
Doesn't bother me. The purpose of Instagram for me is to look at my social circle's lives. If everything they do makes them less of a generic public social network Tik-Tok / Reddit / Facebook / Twitter style, I'd prefer that actually.
What about when it's on another site that you don't have access to? What about when it's a type of content that is relevant to you? This is hacker news so I'll assume you're involved in technology in some capacity - what if something like Stackoverflow was purchased by Facebook or Google and you couldn't view questions without a valid Facebook account?
You're seeing step 1 and not realizing that step 4 or 5 is the entire web gated behind walls.
You're seeing step 1 and not realizing that step 4 or 5 is the entire web gated behind walls.
There is no slippery slope. I'll object to step 4. StackOverflow is CC-BY-SA so I'm not that worried. If they try to change that, I'll kick up a fuss or whatever. It's not like fighting this will help with that. Wholly different audiences.
If there's no "slippery slope", then why do 3-4 companies control the entire internet today, when a decade or more ago there were 15-20 players? Go even further back and you had a myriad of choices; now Amazon, Facebook and Google have sucked up and shut down just about all competitors.
If you don't care, then you don't care. But saying there's no slippery slope? It's capitalism. It's happened with internet providers, it's happened with search engines, it's happened with social media, online stores, it's been funneling into a handful of companies for over a decade now. People want things for free and companies are willing to sell your data to finance their payroll. Saying it won't happen anymore is just naive.
If you don't care, then you don't care. But saying there's no slippery slope? It's capitalism. It's happened with internet providers, it's happened with search engines, it's happened with social media, online stores, it's been funneling into a handful of companies for over a decade now. People want things for free and companies are willing to sell your data to finance their payroll. Saying it won't happen anymore is just naive.
There literally is no slippery slope because the CC-BY-SA stalls any slipping. You literally cannot lock away that content, and that license aligns StackOverflow's incentives with mine.
The structure of the Internet precludes universal locking away. I am confident in my ability and that of my fellow engineers to always have alternatives.
The structure of the Internet precludes universal locking away. I am confident in my ability and that of my fellow engineers to always have alternatives.
I would say that as a free enterprise they are free to do whatever that want. Why do users think that they should have access to Instagram’s data without signing up for an account. LinkedIn does not let you do that so do hundreds of other companies.
There are so many instagram "clones". Not sure what the right term is, but basically its just a copy of the entire site with all the pics/vid links pointing back at fb servers. How they manage to keep this stuff running boggles my mind.
I have moved off everything FB related so its almost become a habit now for me to use these sites to follow certain accounts. With noscript on FF and picking the right clone easy to get the simplest page (no js running) with just the pics and captions.
Just google the insta username and you get the sites.
I have moved off everything FB related so its almost become a habit now for me to use these sites to follow certain accounts. With noscript on FF and picking the right clone easy to get the simplest page (no js running) with just the pics and captions.
Just google the insta username and you get the sites.
Another issue that Instagram has refused to acknowledge has been no-sound-in-stories on Mobile web. It has been this way for more than 6 months[0] and I'm fairly certain it is not a bug - they are intentionally breaking UX to force people to use the app.
[0]: https://old.reddit.com/r/Instagram/comments/dezf9g/no_sound_...
[0]: https://old.reddit.com/r/Instagram/comments/dezf9g/no_sound_...
Very simply "the experience" is much better on mobile = we track everything you do, your location, we mine your friends info...And sell that for more $$$$. And either you don't it / or you don't care or it is simply too complicated unless you are in Europe (in that part of the world it is more risky to sell your personal info without your explicit consent).
Can't really do that if you use your laptop. At least it is harder and harder to get to it (trend to use Safari, Firefox, etc).
Can't really do that if you use your laptop. At least it is harder and harder to get to it (trend to use Safari, Firefox, etc).
This would be true if the site wouldn't work with merely turning on dev tools and pretending to be and iphone.
No, the whole thing is plain bs.
No, the whole thing is plain bs.
I have a theory that we'll get a lot more of these walls going up, not for onboarding users, but to sidestep the legal precedent for allowing webscraping that the LinkedIn case set. I want to say that the LinkedIn ruling hinged on the data being publicly accessible to anyone. If content shifts behind an account signup if imagine that's no longer the case.
Can anyone with more knowledge in the area give more insight into this theory?
I would like to use Instagram because all my friends are on it, but I have a low bullshit tolerance and stuff like this reminds me why I shouldn't sign up.
Instagram is also very liked for people who use it to only follow or be followed by friends, so in that sense it feels like a very private network and does not affect at all. Why would you care if they only allow public profiles to be viewed by people within the platform?
Because I want my profile to be viewed by anyone, including non instagram users, or at least keep the capability to do it.
Also, if they do this, it's highly probable that they do other user-hostile things. AFAIK, you can't upload photos from the desktop web version.
Also, if they do this, it's highly probable that they do other user-hostile things. AFAIK, you can't upload photos from the desktop web version.
Yes. Until a couple of weeks ago I would be able to view individual photos but now I can only view the profile until I hit the login restriction.
Right click the post and select open in new tab. This doesn't fix the problem of not being able to scroll through the history though.
Seems like a good thing. I have wasted time at looking photos, now I can use that time to do something slightly more interesting.
I absolutely adore new experience, it's facebook after all. You can't do it on facebook and now on instagram. I didn't use these products for a long time but IG was definitely moving to that direction.
Can't get why some users don't like the change. You're free to decide should you use a product or not. To put it from other perspective, you choose to become a product for instagram to sell or not. If you don't have an account, it's hard to earn more from your time spent in the app. Billions doesn't ROI themselves.
Old web is still there, forums/personal websites isn't banned. You still can do things the old decentralised way probably to a greater extent because internet is even bigger now.
Can't get why some users don't like the change. You're free to decide should you use a product or not. To put it from other perspective, you choose to become a product for instagram to sell or not. If you don't have an account, it's hard to earn more from your time spent in the app. Billions doesn't ROI themselves.
Old web is still there, forums/personal websites isn't banned. You still can do things the old decentralised way probably to a greater extent because internet is even bigger now.
> Can't get why some users don't like the change. You're free to decide should you use a product or not.
Some people aren't quitters. They don't just quit whenever something stops going their way, they try to change it, try to improve it, try to make it better, even if the only way they have to do that is express why its not best.
Be more like them.
Some people aren't quitters. They don't just quit whenever something stops going their way, they try to change it, try to improve it, try to make it better, even if the only way they have to do that is express why its not best.
Be more like them.
My point is you're not a customer after all. IG customers are advertisers. Why advertisers wouldn't be happy with a new change?
We do try to improve products we use but in this story unfortunately you don't have a voice because if you're not an advertiser. Think about how much ads you need to sell to earn 1B back at least and sustain operating expenses especially when you're not trying to be lean with your resources.
We do try to improve products we use but in this story unfortunately you don't have a voice because if you're not an advertiser. Think about how much ads you need to sell to earn 1B back at least and sustain operating expenses especially when you're not trying to be lean with your resources.
I think you are putting too much stock in the importance of a "Customer". If I'm using a service, i'm a user of that service. As a user, I do have a right to not like the changes to usability of that service.
You have those rights as a human not as an IG user.
As IG user you have only one right, to say "yes" to any changes they want and to obey to the algorithm of banning and censoring. You don't have any right if you can't enforce it. They can ban end censor your opinion and can enforce this right, you can't do anything about it. You are the product they're selling after all and they care about you in terms of as much revenue you can generate on this particular platform (macro picture of user retention).
As IG user you have only one right, to say "yes" to any changes they want and to obey to the algorithm of banning and censoring. You don't have any right if you can't enforce it. They can ban end censor your opinion and can enforce this right, you can't do anything about it. You are the product they're selling after all and they care about you in terms of as much revenue you can generate on this particular platform (macro picture of user retention).
I have not been able to recover my account in about 3 years.
Every time I follow the steps to report the issue, I am linked back to the main troubleshooting start page where the process restarts a la Groundhog Day.
It was hacked and taken over by a Russian account who subsequently realized I have no friends of consequence and so abandoned it. But every single time I try to go through the official channels to recover the account I cannot!
Instagram doesn't care about account recovery because it boosts internal metrics when people make new accounts. I wish concerns like mine were prioritized rather than influencers who need a new way to ask for money from their followers.
Every time I follow the steps to report the issue, I am linked back to the main troubleshooting start page where the process restarts a la Groundhog Day.
It was hacked and taken over by a Russian account who subsequently realized I have no friends of consequence and so abandoned it. But every single time I try to go through the official channels to recover the account I cannot!
Instagram doesn't care about account recovery because it boosts internal metrics when people make new accounts. I wish concerns like mine were prioritized rather than influencers who need a new way to ask for money from their followers.
I am curious how you were able to confirm that "It was hacked and taken over by a Russian account"
What are they trying to prevent? Mass image scraping? The people doing that are going to keep doing it regardless of any hoops they make them jump through. This just makes the registration process for normal users more annoying.
Mass image scraping after login is a legal distinction in terms of violating the ToS. Also, Instagram wants to make it harder for scrapers, who rely on cheap to maintain pipelines because the overall goal is to monetize massive amounts of photos, not a few thousand. (IE makes it harder for them to scrape to get teh volume necessary to make it a viable scraping endeavor)
They (almost certainly) want Instagram to be entirely a "social platform," not something to just passively consume as an outsider.
I sometimes used to browse my friend's instagram feeds just to see what they have been up to, as I don't use instagram due to privacy concerns and personalized feeds being a time-eater. The desktop experience has been degrading for the past year or so, for example you were unable to scroll past maybe 20 photos on someones profile without logging in. That's ridiculous, and I hope that Instagram and Facebook die someday.
I mean, aside from the fact that you don't like it, why is that "ridiculous"? It's their platform, can they not do what they want?
Well it is their platform, but they are using what I would consider unethical means to force people to create accounts, collecting and selling their data.
Sure, you can say that I should avoid Mark's websites altogether if I want to keep my data safe, but that would probably mean that a huge portion of my social life would be sacrificed.
Sure, you can say that I should avoid Mark's websites altogether if I want to keep my data safe, but that would probably mean that a huge portion of my social life would be sacrificed.
They've been pretty anal about it for a while now. Yeah you can see photos but scroll down like half a page? Login window in your face with no back button.
Pretty hostile UX
Pretty hostile UX
There is a way to avoid the login requirement, if you want to enlarge a photo or video, or read its accompanying text. I'm not an Instagram user, and I never will be. But, sometimes I want to read a post by a friend or a business.
While viewing the gallery page for an Instagram user, right click on the post you want to access and select "Copy link location," or whatever your browser calls it, then paste the link into a new tab.
While viewing the gallery page for an Instagram user, right click on the post you want to access and select "Copy link location," or whatever your browser calls it, then paste the link into a new tab.
Also very annoying: When you login, they want to have your phone number. I tried a couple online services for receiving SMS, but none of them worked...
One way to use Instagram on desktop is to change your browser's User-Agent to a mobile one
I made a blog post[1] about it a while ago which is elementaryOS oriented but can be used in any system or browser
[1] https://asvvvad.eu.org/?page=blog&id=use-epiphany-as-mobile-...
I made a blog post[1] about it a while ago which is elementaryOS oriented but can be used in any system or browser
[1] https://asvvvad.eu.org/?page=blog&id=use-epiphany-as-mobile-...
It's been a slow closing door with access on PC without accounts. They've slowly been rolling back access for years now on the PC side. This is the door finally being closed and latched. I'm sure they believe it will up conversion and increase growth, but I don't think it will.
Twitter has been closing their door for a long time, but I wonder if they ever will?
Twitter has been closing their door for a long time, but I wonder if they ever will?
I'm quite confused by this article. Instagram has never allowed me to see photos. I have never had an Instagram account and refuse to get one. They'll let me maybe scroll a "teaser" but that pop-up will always happen and always has.
I always set anything twitter to untrust in noscript, and just ignore/close anything that comes up linking to them like most common vermin ad/tracking services. Not sure why anyone would link to them as "news", pictures or other.
This is how it begins. Then as three or four companies gradually consume all smaller services (which is happening and has been happening for years), you need to sell your soul to them to view anything.
My advice is to just say "no thanks" and move on.
My advice is to just say "no thanks" and move on.
What if more users install the browser extension/add-on that automatically changes the user-agent string based on domain name, e.g., for Instagram it changes to a random mobile user-agent. Sorry I forgot the name of the extension.
Here are a couple of such add-ons / extensions:
User-Agent Switcher https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/uaswitcher/
Custom UserAgent String https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/custom-user-a...
User-Agent Switcher and Manager https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/user-agent-st...
and a comment by "99" pointing to an extension-free method to quickly change the user agent:
https://www.ghacks.net/2019/12/23/custom-useragent-string-is...
User-Agent Switcher https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/uaswitcher/
Custom UserAgent String https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/custom-user-a...
User-Agent Switcher and Manager https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/user-agent-st...
and a comment by "99" pointing to an extension-free method to quickly change the user agent:
https://www.ghacks.net/2019/12/23/custom-useragent-string-is...
There is also a browser-free method. Localhost proxy, e.g., haproxy, that rewrites User-Agent header according to URL and/or Host header.
It's been that way for a couple of months at least. This login screen can be blocked with adblockers, but the fact that it's making rounds only now kind of shows that no one was using it anyway
I just noticed this a few days ago when checking a friend's dog feed. If you open in private window it still seems to allow. (browse normal to instagram, right-click, open in new private window tab)
Opening in a normal new tab should work as well. I think it's because clicking a photo normally uses client-side navigation (navigates with JS), while opening in a new tab will fetch the entire new page.
actually normal tab wasnt.. i was a little surprised
Guess I'm not going to be looking at any more Instagram content. ️
Use a IG front-end just like how you use nitter for Twitter links:
https://bibliogram.snopyta.org/ is one instance.
https://bibliogram.snopyta.org/ is one instance.
This is simply a continuation of the trend of making Instagram work like Facebook's main product. Of course there's no reasonable justification for it that favors consumers.
There is a little trick to bypass this, open your browser console, click on mobile view, and refresh the page, it should load the mobile version of Instagram.
You can right click, open photos/videos in new tabs... For now. Probably to satisfy their desire to get new users, if someone links directly to a post.
It actually does, but you have limited time until that pop up appears. You just right click on the photo, and have it open the link in a new tab.
I kinda think this is a decent idea, given the whole ClearviewAI scraping thing. Not that it puts up a massive gate, but definitely a solution.
At least now, hopefully, search engines will remove Instagram pages from their results entirely. This can only be a good thing.
Instagram died when they got rid of followers activity status. I liked the interesting things that people liked.
I wonder if the purpose of this is legal IP control and not so much to get people to login to the platform.
FWIW ublock origin blocks the signup overlay and you can continue browsing like normal.
Fk you instagram, I'm blocklisting your site and I'll never visit it again.
They will save a lot of money.
looks like this trick isn't working anymore: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9IYZ8mktk7k&t=40s
I'm fairly sure uBlock Origin removes that banner (it does for me).
Interesting. Would it work if you pretend you are using cell phone?
Yep. There's a video in the post showing that. If you change the browser's user agent to any browser in iPhone or Android, photos and videos open normally.
Reddit did the same thing. Don't use as much as i use before.
Its kinda ironic that their offices lead out to Salesforce Park
Middle click still works to open a post in a new tab.
So they’re going the Pinterest way now.
What about on their smartphones?
This story seems to be dropping off the front page a little faster than it should "naturally".
Hey Instagram (i.e. Facebook)!
Fuck you!
Love,
Me
Fuck you!
Love,
Me
Title rewrite:
Instagram Influencers Now Have Even Less Influence Over RDiddly
Instagram Influencers Now Have Even Less Influence Over RDiddly
I hate these walled apps. Having to log in is maddening. Especially Facebook, especially right now...
As a photographer, I have to have some sort of IG presence but I absolutely hate the app, the UX and the whole enchilada. Its the worst viewing experience possible for good photos and yet is the medium of choice for so many... I miss the old web.
As a photographer, I have to have some sort of IG presence but I absolutely hate the app, the UX and the whole enchilada. Its the worst viewing experience possible for good photos and yet is the medium of choice for so many... I miss the old web.
Honestly, I think I prefer not having access to something like Pinterest[1] which lets you have some access for a bit and then as soon as you try to interact with the site in any meaningful way (usually to leave it) they insist you sign in.
At least with this I know the expectation up front, rather than having it sprung on me by surprise.
[1] I've avoided Pinterest for awhile that this may not be the way they attempt to capture accounts any more.
At least with this I know the expectation up front, rather than having it sprung on me by surprise.
[1] I've avoided Pinterest for awhile that this may not be the way they attempt to capture accounts any more.
Pinterest is awful in this regard but what makes it even worse is that so many other sites followed in their footsteps. I know why, I just dont like the process or the idea of having to offer up my info and "join a club" before I've even set foot in the door or peeked around a little.
Instagram does exactly this. You can interact with it's site via browser and open a few links until shows a popup saying you have to login (which you can't close).
The linked article is about how they stopped doing that and now require you to log in immediately.
Or used to be? What I reported is a change in this behavior. It doesn't allow someone browse those few photos and videos before shows a popup asking for a login.
My disdain for Pinterest is at unrecoverable levels because of this and the fact they display interesting photos without any details or source listed even if logged in. I often wonder the difference between people that become antagonistic for being forced to signup vs people that are persuaded.
Pinterest is the worst thing on the web. I do not understand why google puts pinterest links as the top search results constantly, even though it is a completely shallow and pointless page that merely obfuscates the content I would actually want to see from some other site. Why would i want to see what is effectively a notice of someone saying they like a webpage, rather than the webpage? And considering google claimed they would penalize sites for giving one set of content to googlebot and something else completely to users, pinterest shouldn't be in search results at all.
I wonder why rights holders don’t issue takedowns to Pinterest for their google results. Usually the image only supports Pinterest as a way to try to get someone to sign up. There are no links through to the creator
Edit: takedowns to google for Pinterest google results.
Edit: takedowns to google for Pinterest google results.
my main complaint is watching videos on desktop web or the mobile app - there's no way to control play/pause/scrubbing. you just have to sit through it and if you miss any of it, watch it again from the start.
same goes for tiktok i believe.
this isn't an issue with the mobile version of the website.
anyway, rant over - i hate mobile apps.
same goes for tiktok i believe.
this isn't an issue with the mobile version of the website.
anyway, rant over - i hate mobile apps.
I think this is a deliberate decision, although I'm not sure why.
You can download the videos if you're savvy enough to open the dev tools, delete the transparent div, and find the element with the video (which may not be a URL but one of those weird blob: ones). Simples.
You can download the videos if you're savvy enough to open the dev tools, delete the transparent div, and find the element with the video (which may not be a URL but one of those weird blob: ones). Simples.
Each time you re-start it counts as another "play" for their metrics. It's been common on various sites for a while now.
Have you given PixelFed a shot?
Was unaware of ActivityPub, will definitely check out PixelFed. Thanks!
You can also explore posts using my aggregator
https://pixelfed.club
Would love to hear more about what you desire in a photo sharing experience. My email should be in my profile if you want to chat.
As a photographer, I want security and assurances that my work remains my work and is not easily stolen nor transferable without consent.
As a user, I want simplicity and way to view work based on a number of options that I choose. Not based on an algorithm or AI. My choices, my mood, my desires.
Instagram is no longer a photo-sharing app. Its a platform for self promotion. Not much different than Twitter, LinkedIn or FB in that regard. I guess all social media dissolves into a self promotion circle jerk... Avoid their fate if at all possible.
As a user, I want simplicity and way to view work based on a number of options that I choose. Not based on an algorithm or AI. My choices, my mood, my desires.
Instagram is no longer a photo-sharing app. Its a platform for self promotion. Not much different than Twitter, LinkedIn or FB in that regard. I guess all social media dissolves into a self promotion circle jerk... Avoid their fate if at all possible.
> my work remains my work and is not easily stolen nor transferable without consent
I think in general, this is a "hard" problem for an Internet-based service. You would have to include a watermark of some kind, which arguably hinders viewer experience. And regardless, it is still very easy for viewers to capture an image by downloading or taking a screenshot.
I do agree with your sentiment about IG though.
I think in general, this is a "hard" problem for an Internet-based service. You would have to include a watermark of some kind, which arguably hinders viewer experience. And regardless, it is still very easy for viewers to capture an image by downloading or taking a screenshot.
I do agree with your sentiment about IG though.
Honestly, I dont know the answer. Maybe its blockchain like tracking in the image file? Maybe its something else... There are many technologies available that can fingerprint a file, and others that can ID an image. A service that includes this type of feature would be good. And of course, anyone can screenshot an image, but they cannot resell a screenshot for commercial use.
But in the end the EULA of these apps are designed to shield the entities from liabilities while offering them many options for re-distribution of others work. That's the biggest problem.
But in the end the EULA of these apps are designed to shield the entities from liabilities while offering them many options for re-distribution of others work. That's the biggest problem.
Thus a watermark and maybe a service that does image searches for your images on a schedule and then alerts you if someone uses it?
This exists: https://www.pixsy.com/
> As a photographer, I want security and assurances that my work remains my work and is not easily stolen nor transferable without consent.
I'm curious how you reconcile this with your previous desire for the "old web": paywall? js to interfere with the ability to copy/hotlink images?
I'm curious how you reconcile this with your previous desire for the "old web": paywall? js to interfere with the ability to copy/hotlink images?
User agreements of these entities are onerous and impossible to challenge. They shield the companies in ways you cannot even fathom and allow many to steal your work and use as they please.
Ah, so you're referring to contractual issues (I posted an image and now Instagram's sub-licensing it to everyone a la https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/04/judge-smacks-dow...) rather than technical ones (user can't right-click save-as)?
Makes sense, thanks.
Makes sense, thanks.
What do you think of Flickr?
"I hate the current norm for successful social media apps that make billions of dollars"
Just a reminder, HN viewpoints do not matter at all.
Just a reminder, HN viewpoints do not matter at all.
This wall was already there in some form or another.
I think what they are trying to do is to get people off of the computer in general because ad blockers would make it impossible for them to monetize the platform.
These ad blockers do not really exist on mobile unless you jailbreak and install some shady third-party shit.
I think what they are trying to do is to get people off of the computer in general because ad blockers would make it impossible for them to monetize the platform.
These ad blockers do not really exist on mobile unless you jailbreak and install some shady third-party shit.
How is it preventing people with adblockers to use instagram just like they did before? The experience will be exactly the same as before, regardless of adblockers, as long as you are logged in.
Instagram is riffled with semi-nude photos of women that I seriously doubt it has any real value whatsoever. And it's kind of surprising considering that FB has a very strict policy when it comes to showing nude pics. They should have brought down the hammer long ago.
How does blocking access help people view things? How does blocking access help people understand how to have the best experience? Access is a better experience than access denied. Creating an account and lurking does not help anyone be part of a community. Most online communities are almost entirely lurkers. Creating an account doesn't lead to interaction. There's no way instagram isn't aware of these facts; I'm not a professional social network product manager and I know these things. There are other motives here than what instagram claims.