
Third-Party Instagram Apps and Websites Cease to Work - techdetect
http://www.macrumors.com/2016/06/02/instagram-third-party-apps-websites-dead/
======
Naomarik
I created a classifieds platform around Instagram posts and been operating
since around April 2015. When filling out their form and creating a screencast
begging for access back, I get denied stating that their API is not for "one
off projects."

YouTube shows that they haven't even watched the screencast they asked me to
make, just flat out denied without spending any time on my API request.

It's their product and they can do whatever they want with it, but the
annoying thing is that they had released an API for people to play with,
people built features around it, and now the features do not work. This kind
of disrespectful dismissal make me really reluctant to spend time integrating
other APIs in future things I make.

~~~
endemic
I will never integrate with a 3rd party API unless I have some sort of
contract which prevents them from yanking the rug out from under me. Sadly,
the sort of developer-hostile TOS that Instagram uses is all too common these
days: "Instagram may change, suspend, or discontinue the availability of any
Instagram APIs at any time. In addition, Instagram may impose limits on
certain features and services or restrict your access to parts or all of the
Instagram APIs or the Instagram website without notice or liability."
([https://www.instagram.com/about/legal/terms/api/](https://www.instagram.com/about/legal/terms/api/))

~~~
mattzito
Then you're never going to be able to integrate with any APIs. Even the best
free APIs have clauses that the provider isn't liable for any damages caused
to you due to their changing their mind about the business they want to be in.

In this case, though, Instagram gave people over six months to transition to
the new process and workflow, and for us, our approval took less than a week.
IMHO, this is a good example of the right way to transition applications over.

~~~
abootstrapper
They should have done a soft shutdown to alert developers. Half of the
developers didn't even know about the upcoming change because Instagram emails
just end up in junk.

~~~
jimboyoungblood
They've had a notice at the top of
[https://www.instagram.com/developer/](https://www.instagram.com/developer/)
since late last year.

>> Any app created before Nov 17, 2015 will continue to function until June 1,
2016. On that date, the app will automatically be moved to Sandbox Mode if it
wasn't approved through the review process

~~~
pimlottc
Let's be real, after a project is finished, no developer is going to randomly
keep watching the docs page of one of the probably many APIs they used for it.

~~~
mattzito
But they also were emailing - I got like five emails for my personal projects
warning me that things were changing. Plus it was reported in the tech press:

[http://www.macrumors.com/2015/11/17/instagram-new-api-
change...](http://www.macrumors.com/2015/11/17/instagram-new-api-changes/)

[http://techcrunch.com/2015/11/17/just-
instagram/](http://techcrunch.com/2015/11/17/just-instagram/)

I'm really not sure what more people expect instagram to do.

~~~
dk8996
We never got any emails from Instagram.

------
jcfrei
This appears to be just in line with the typical lifecycle of a social
network. There was a recent comment which outlined it:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11829562](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11829562)
I'd say Instagram is entering stage 3 (locked content and curated feed).

------
xuki
"Coincidentally" they released a new set of business tools
([http://blog.business.instagram.com/post/145212269021/new-
bus...](http://blog.business.instagram.com/post/145212269021/new-business-
tools)) on the same day. I have no insider info but I think this is mostly
about capturing the analytics market that was previously served by 3rd
parties.

There were also a lot of spam apps (buy likes/followers) on the App Store/Play
Store and this move removes most of them. They're also avoiding a Tweetdeck
situation when a 3rd party client gets too big to ignore. Good for them, bad
for users.

Disclosure: I made an Instagram client for iPad
([http://retroapp.net](http://retroapp.net)). Funny that since some apps have
moved to private API and now can do more than public API (no upload, no Direct
access).

~~~
terhechte
I'm also the author of a Instagram client ([http://photodesk-
app.com](http://photodesk-app.com)) and I went through the trouble of applying
for their new API and got all permissions granted by specifically catering to
businesses / brands. However, it is quite frustrating to see other apps (like
flume) just flat use the private API. I wonder why I went through all this
trouble in the first place. If Instagram at least did something about these
private API clients, it would be worth applying for the official one, but as
it stands currently, I'm doing worse.

~~~
jonnyscholes
Except that I saw your comment, looked at your app, looked at flume, bought
your basic app then immediately upgraded to the pro version. Your app does
exactly what I need with no bullshit. Cheers!

~~~
terhechte
That's awesome! Thanks for buying pro! :)

------
Mizza
Happened to me recently at SoundCloud. Bonus: they deleted all of my unrelated
music, followers and likes without any warning or method of appeal.

We asked for this.

~~~
cm3
Yep, as long as we develop extensions and tools for platforms with ToS like
that, we are to be blamed. It reminds me of most developers' blissful
ignorance of CLAs and merrily pushing patches to projects where they hand over
copyright ownership to the likes of Google, Ubuntu, Microsoft, etc., while
probably not being aware that their code can be relicensed into anything
without their future consent.

------
nkantar
I wanted to build a small side project utilizing Instagram, and when I read
their API ToS, I was completely demotivated. Everything having to be about
brands drilled in the fact that I, the user, am the product, and my interest
in the platform even as a consumer dropped significantly.

I now post very rarely and almost never browse. Occasionally I'll look up a
particular hashtag relating to some car/motorcycle I like, but that's
basically it.

The curated feed shift (has that happened yet?) was also very bad news for me.

~~~
raihansaputra
The "curated" feed is rolled out gradually. My older account already have it
while my newer account does not (I still check both currently). Really ruins
the experience ("Wait did this happen yesterday? Oh no actually 3 days ago"
etc).

------
prajjwal
I wonder if there's going to be any noise over this outside the developer
community. There was when Twitter pulled this nonsense, but their third party
clients had massive followings. I, personally, have never heard of a third
party Instagram client.

This has happened with so many services over the years, that one would think
developers would be more enthusiastic about educating the end user with libre
software. I do that aggressively with people I know. Too much to ask?

~~~
spriggan3
> Too much to ask?

It's just that for services like that the wealth is the data, they don't want
3rd parties to profit from their precious data. Instagram (free) API was
shitty anyway, so I bet not a lot of developers was using it. Twitter API and
data is far more useful.

------
nikrdc
Reminiscent of one of Twitter's early mistakes

~~~
dfischer
Not really sure the demographic of Instagram really cares about anything other
than the Instagram app.

~~~
raihansaputra
Probably more of the power users (brands and celebrities) that uses 3rd party
analytics. Instagram is clearly trying to move people to their upcoming
Analytics feature.

~~~
dfischer
Yeah completely agree. This makes sense for them to lock it down and offer
business incentive. Good on them honestly.

------
kmfrk
Going to miss my RSS feeds.

Won't be long before I can't access Instagram altogether without an account,
much like Facebook.

------
mschuster91
Seriously, what stops people from simply using the API keys and routes from
the official app?

Instagram can't revoke the keys because that 'd kill the app for those who
don't upgrade their apps all the time, the only thing they could do is to
pressure the app stores to take apps down - but I wonder on what legal
grounds?

~~~
ceejayoz
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_Fraud_and_Abuse_Act](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_Fraud_and_Abuse_Act)

~~~
mschuster91
Non-US persons and companies are not bound by this; also, the app developer
does not bypass access controls himself...

------
nfriedly
Well, that sucks. I set up a small website with contact info, wish lists, etc.
for my wife and I. It also included both of our Instagram feeds. As of today,
hers is disabled and mine works :/

------
Ciantic
My only usecase for Instagram "app" was to embed client's feed in their own
webpage. It doesn't look good right now, I don't think this usecase is
allowed, it's not in the approval list.

I just can't understand this, business X wants to embed their own damned feed
on their own page, how should they do it now?

I've hacked together a way to use unofficial API
[https://instagram.com/query](https://instagram.com/query) but it's a bit iffy
to use this.

------
tectonic
I had to remove the Instagram integration from my site because of this.

------
fahrradflucht
I always thought that they would wait with this until they finally made an own
iPad app, but that seems to be not they case.

Maybe it's because their mobile website is finally quite good, but looking at
the Facebook Web Messenger story[1] I'm surprised they go that route.

[1][https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11834935](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11834935)

------
amelius
I'm wondering if one day we will have laws that will prevent companies from
building silos that cut off independent developers.

~~~
sdoering
Why. Why does a company not have the right to decide whom to give access?

~~~
amelius
Because it is something that we as a society do not desire. The data in those
silos is _our_ data, not _their_ data (unless you want to live by the letter
of the law rather than use common sense). It saddens me that a large part of
our culture is locked behind the doors of youtube, instagram, facebook and
twitter.

~~~
nilved
What makes it ours? And if one should follow common sense rather than the law,
why is your proposed solution a law?

~~~
amelius
> What makes it ours?

The fact that we created that data.

Here is an analogy. If I buy a piece of paper and it contains an EULA that
says that any works written on that paper become property of the manufacturer
of the paper, then would that be legally binding? If so, then do we want to
live in a world where paper manufacturers have control over our intellectual
property?

Note that paper is a commodity product, but the same holds for online video
services, and messaging services. The ones we are using today have no or
little competitive edge over other services (other than network effect), they
were just lucky enough that we chose to use them.

~~~
iamphilrae
That's a completely non-related analogy. A better one is if you were to go to
a university, become a student, use their facilities, and do research there,
then the uni rightfully owns a percentage of any IP you come up with there.
It's in their ToS when you signed up and that's what you have chosen to stick
to. It's no different if you use FB or Instagram; you've agreed to their ToS
that data you've pushed through their service is their's to do what they want
with. If you're not happy with that, move along and use something else-
perhaps print your photos onto your hypothetical paper and share them using
that.

------
instakill
I like that Instagram has an API but they make me feel like I'm begging them
for access. I've finished my app so long ago but I've put off applying for
production access because I'm afraid of how my screencast will be received.

------
jsogbein
Always wondering why these big companies don't just get people to pay to use
their APIs. Why not leverage the popularity they have into becoming a content
provider for other spin off products?

~~~
tremon
Because there's value in owning your own tail. That your tail would be ten
times longer if you didn't own it is of no value to shareholders.

------
ungzd
Banning useful third-party services and doing almost nothing agains spammers…
I receive 5-10 follows/likes from spam accounts every day.

------
protomyth
"Don't store or cache Instagram login credentials."

So, a app needs to ask for a login and password each time it access Instagram?

~~~
doomrobo
Well that's just good practice. Apps would normally ask you to log in once,
receive an API token from the server, and continue to use that for the rest of
the tokens lifetime. When the token expires, it'll prompt you again for your
login.

~~~
techdetect
Sure but consider that every endpoint in the API needs a login. That means
that you can no longer construct a simple feed widget of a hashtag for your
website.

~~~
doomrobo
Oh, I didn't see that part. That's a lot more inconvenient.

------
dk8996
Anyone know how long the application review process is to gain access to the
new API is?

~~~
cowholio4
I applied yesterday when my app broke and was approved today. So less than 24
hours.

~~~
instakill
oh wow. thanks I'll apply today. I've been putting it off thinking it's going
to be a huge thing.

------
abcampbell
Reminds me of zenefits vs ADP

------
tdkl
So just in time they're shipping global curated timelines, you can't make an
app that sorts posts back in chronological timeline? What a coincidence!

~~~
nstj
Instagram have left open the option that in the future the curated timeline
may also adjust the _content_ of your feed so even if you could fix the
ordering at a temporal level, there would still be omissions.

> As we begin, we’re focusing on optimizing the order — all the posts will
> still be there, just in a different order.[0]

Also the "promoted post" feature which they have in their new business
tools[1] looks like down the track it will incorporate a feature where
businesses can pay for their regular Instagram photos to appear in more feeds.
Which means even more that the `/posts` endpoint which you hit as a user is
controlled by Instagram

[0]:
[http://blog.instagram.com/post/141107034797/160315-news](http://blog.instagram.com/post/141107034797/160315-news)
[1]: [http://blog.business.instagram.com/post/145212269021/new-
bus...](http://blog.business.instagram.com/post/145212269021/new-business-
tools)

~~~
ethanbond
> optimizing the order [for advertisers]

Has anyone ever said, "ya know... Something's not right about the order of my
Instagram feed. It seems to be all chronological!"

