I tried all sorts of automation in the past and always get banned at the end. Not worth it. Use AI or whatever to generate your social media content but always post it manually for best engagement and not getting banned
on business pages they literally give you access to the posting API.... And you can automate against that. Not that they will give you much action on that without the sweet sweet accelerant of ad money.
I appreciate (and encourage) using real life problems as a pretext for researching new topics and developing new skills, but
1. I'm really curious as to what's the desired outcome here? A spambot to flood people's notifications?
2. I'll admit that I have absolutely no idea how Instagram's API layer (and protection) works but wouldn't capturing the HTTP calls a more appropriate and easier approach to take?
1. Social media accounts with lots of engagement and high follower counts are worth big money these days. However, it takes a ton of effort to build that up organically. It's not difficult to see possible motives for something like this.
2. Leveraging their private APIs will get you banned even quicker than OPs method.
>A full screenshot is huge. Over 7 million pixels on a typical screen.
Hmmm i don't think that's true? 1080p is 2M, 2K is 4M, 4K is 8M. Are we really in an era where full 4K is "typical"? For reading Instagram? I've got 4 screens i use on a daily basis that are all 2K or less. I mean my TV was only 1080p until a few months ago lol. Maybe I'm just slow.
Also: you're automating the browser, just make the window smaller then!
This is also why creating a regular account is so difficult on all the social networks. You sign up and it is instantly banned and you have to go through a whole review and approval process just to use it. Incredibly user and company hostile.
As someone that has recently built out a once-daily crawler for a not so banny site, thanks for the article.
I haven’t had to go the CV route yet, but I know it’s a matter of time once they “improve” the site and it starts breaking regularly.
I tried all sorts of automation in the past and always get banned at the end. Not worth it. Use AI or whatever to generate your social media content but always post it manually for best engagement and not getting banned
on business pages they literally give you access to the posting API.... And you can automate against that. Not that they will give you much action on that without the sweet sweet accelerant of ad money.
Pray for the organic, pay for the boost.
I realized months ago that social networks are distribution systems. Want acceleration? Pay.
There is little incentive to make anything viral/organically boosted.
I appreciate (and encourage) using real life problems as a pretext for researching new topics and developing new skills, but
1. I'm really curious as to what's the desired outcome here? A spambot to flood people's notifications?
2. I'll admit that I have absolutely no idea how Instagram's API layer (and protection) works but wouldn't capturing the HTTP calls a more appropriate and easier approach to take?
1. Social media accounts with lots of engagement and high follower counts are worth big money these days. However, it takes a ton of effort to build that up organically. It's not difficult to see possible motives for something like this.
2. Leveraging their private APIs will get you banned even quicker than OPs method.
Adding to the 2nd point: It's one of the most watched APIs for suspicious activity ever.
Anything not from their vanilla app, the littlest dot on their charts will trigger severe alarms and actions.
Big correlation systems. The safest path used to be to automate the app itself, through mobile automation, but they even got too sensitive to that.
I don't doubt the whole app has a behavioural analysis component, full screen size, much like a big "I am not a robot" checkbox.
Also, it's very likely their private APIs are CSRF-protected or similar.
what if i were purely interested in archiving local community posts? does anyone have experience on scraping without getting banned?
i have no interest in juicing engagement, purely from a "20 years from now it'll be cool to know this existed at all" aspect.
Thank you. Thanks to you, I was able to break free from my Instagram addiction
This is not related to the article. But I would like to see people generated feeds rather than automated feeds.
e.g. contradictory feeds.
1. motivational post followed immediately be demotivational post iteratively. this will allow people not be stuck in one basin of attraction.
2. wealth flaunting posts followed by poverty posts to elicit a strong contrast and inequality.
3. science posts followed by pseudo-science posts
4. feeds that are generated like DJ sets. instead of playing with music, the feed would play with emotions.
Other such combinations.
>A full screenshot is huge. Over 7 million pixels on a typical screen.
Hmmm i don't think that's true? 1080p is 2M, 2K is 4M, 4K is 8M. Are we really in an era where full 4K is "typical"? For reading Instagram? I've got 4 screens i use on a daily basis that are all 2K or less. I mean my TV was only 1080p until a few months ago lol. Maybe I'm just slow.
Also: you're automating the browser, just make the window smaller then!
This is also why creating a regular account is so difficult on all the social networks. You sign up and it is instantly banned and you have to go through a whole review and approval process just to use it. Incredibly user and company hostile.
You start to wonder if that’s a good place to be present
that is why it is called a gift
Agreed. For better or worse, social networks are the fb marketplace of eyes.
how could this be for better?
If you're a business, it is a great way to get customers.
Every product zuckerberg has is cancerous except WhatsApp
A spam post here about how to spam Instagram. This is what the internet is now.