
Instagram no longer allows people without an account to view photos on computers - rpgbr
https://manualdousuario.net/instagram-photos-videos-unlogged-on-computers/
======
cosmotic
“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”

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.

~~~
lmilcin
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.

~~~
lotyrin
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.

~~~
svantana
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.

~~~
pmontra
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.

------
Guest0918231
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.

~~~
lgvld
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.

------
fao_
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.

~~~
sjroot
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. :)

~~~
dx87
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.

~~~
bscphil
> 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.

------
nakodari
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.

~~~
basch
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.

~~~
mbreedlove
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.

~~~
ibero
operative word: i.

~~~
Wesxdz
A lot of search is searcher context sensitive, so I don't think automating
this is unreasonable

------
12xo
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.

~~~
bmelton
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.

~~~
turtlebits
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).

~~~
plorkyeran
The linked article is about how they stopped doing that and now require you to
log in immediately.

------
iamthepieman
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?

~~~
ABeeSea
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.

~~~
gravitas
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/](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.

------
morphicpro
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](https://morphic.pro/snaps)

The code is open for others to see how I did it.
[https://github.com/MorphicPro/morphic.pro](https://github.com/MorphicPro/morphic.pro)

~~~
sixstringtheory
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?

~~~
morphicpro
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.

------
ghostpepper
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.

~~~
Guest0918231
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.

------
dillutedfixer
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.

~~~
pmlnr
> 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.

~~~
dillutedfixer
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.

~~~
dingaling
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.

~~~
bscphil
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](https://twitter.com/NolanOBrien/status/1204557498990002176)

I was actually pretty impressed by this change from a non-photo site.

------
pmlnr
... 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](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._

------
pengaru
And Twitter requires a phone number for "verification" shortly after creating
a new account without one.

Stop using this trash.

~~~
throw_m239339
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.

~~~
pengaru
> 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.

------
throw_m239339
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.

~~~
RandomBacon
Your laptop probably doesn't have gps location data they can exfiltrate.

------
dec0rum
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

~~~
basch
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"

~~~
rpgbr
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.

~~~
basch
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.

~~~
rpgbr
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.

~~~
basch
I would expect all those people to have a cookie or equivalent tracker saying
"this person has been to instagram before"

------
blakesterz
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)

~~~
ISL
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.)

~~~
onion2k
_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.

------
0xddd
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.

------
jakub_g
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/](https://igdig.com/)

~~~
monadic2
Note, instagram is pretty trivial to scrape. I’m guessing that is the real
target of these changes: removing unauthorized apis.

------
_fzslm
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.

~~~
uoaei
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.

------
renewiltord
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.

~~~
geddy
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.

~~~
renewiltord
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.

~~~
geddy
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.

~~~
renewiltord
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.

------
downvoteme1
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.

------
captn3m0
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_...](https://old.reddit.com/r/Instagram/comments/dezf9g/no_sound_with_instagram_stories_on_windows_chrome/)

------
op03
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.

------
jbkiv
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).

~~~
pmlnr
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.

------
ajflores1604
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?

------
sandov
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.

~~~
jaimehrubiks
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?

~~~
sandov
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.

------
Veera_Sivarajan
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.

~~~
ghastmaster
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.

------
geodel
Seems like a good thing. I have wasted time at looking photos, now I can use
that time to do something slightly more interesting.

------
troughway
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.

~~~
filoleg
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.

------
vpEfljFL
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.

~~~
MrStonedOne
> 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.

~~~
vpEfljFL
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.

~~~
MrStonedOne
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.

~~~
vpEfljFL
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).

------
uoaei
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.

~~~
FpUser
I am curious how you were able to confirm that "It was hacked and taken over
by a Russian account"

------
izzydata
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.

~~~
edmundsauto
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)

------
alufers
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.

~~~
lowan12
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?

~~~
alufers
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.

------
Havoc
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

------
getpost
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.

------
RoyalBingBong
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...

------
ASVVVAD
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-...](https://asvvvad.eu.org/?page=blog&id=use-epiphany-as-mobile-
browser)

------
malwarebytess
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?

------
Paul-ish
I have been unable to sign up for an account without a phone number. That is
what keeps me off the platform.

~~~
Jnr
You are not missing much.

------
gao8a
Part of me believes that this is actually to get folks that left instagram
back on the platform.

------
rendall
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.

------
bastard_op
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.

------
geddy
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.

------
3xblah
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.

~~~
miles
Here are a couple of such add-ons / extensions:

User-Agent Switcher [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
US/firefox/addon/uaswitcher/](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
US/firefox/addon/uaswitcher/)

Custom UserAgent String [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
US/firefox/addon/custom-user-a...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
US/firefox/addon/custom-user-agent-revived/)

User-Agent Switcher and Manager [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
US/firefox/addon/user-agent-st...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
US/firefox/addon/user-agent-string-switcher/)

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...](https://www.ghacks.net/2019/12/23/custom-useragent-string-is-a-firefox-
extension-that-lets-you-set-a-user-agent-on-a-per-site-basis/#comment-4447842)

~~~
3xblah
There is also a browser-free method. Localhost proxy, e.g., haproxy, that
rewrites User-Agent header according to URL and/or Host header.

------
graynk
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

------
sharkmerry
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)

~~~
danielmichaelni
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.

~~~
sharkmerry
actually normal tab wasnt.. i was a little surprised

------
caconym_
Guess I'm not going to be looking at any more Instagram content. ️

------
ycombi3
Use a IG front-end just like how you use nitter for Twitter links:

[https://bibliogram.snopyta.org/](https://bibliogram.snopyta.org/) is one
instance.

------
code_duck
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.

------
seddin
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.

------
peterhadlaw
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.

------
helsinki
This is a reasonable decision on their part. I don’t think people realize how
much of their traffic is bots scraping the location of people from photos.

~~~
Meai
well, how much is it? do you have a source?

------
tushar-r
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.

------
hnburnsy
[http://bugmenot.com/view/instagram.com](http://bugmenot.com/view/instagram.com)

------
icedchai
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.

------
rambojazz
At least now, hopefully, search engines will remove Instagram pages from their
results _entirely_. This can only be a good thing.

------
hollsted-ifbit
Instagram died when they got rid of followers activity status. I liked the
interesting things that people liked.

------
petermcneeley
I wonder if the purpose of this is legal IP control and not so much to get
people to login to the platform.

------
Fudgel
FWIW ublock origin blocks the signup overlay and you can continue browsing
like normal.

------
maallooc
Fk you instagram, I'm blocklisting your site and I'll never visit it again.

------
ggmartins
looks like this trick isn't working anymore:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9IYZ8mktk7k&t=40s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9IYZ8mktk7k&t=40s)

------
meerita
They will save a lot of money.

------
sdan
I'm fairly sure uBlock Origin removes that banner (it does for me).

------
0max
Its kinda ironic that their offices lead out to Salesforce Park

------
batirch
Reddit did the same thing. Don't use as much as i use before.

------
A4ET8a8uTh0
Interesting. Would it work if you pretend you are using cell phone?

~~~
rpgbr
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.

------
chinathrow
Middle click still works to open a post in a new tab.

------
neuralRiot
So they’re going the Pinterest way now.

------
nestlequ1k
What about on their smartphones?

------
calibas
This story seems to be dropping off the front page a little faster than it
should "naturally".

------
wackget
Hey Instagram (i.e. Facebook)!

Fuck you!

Love,

Me

------
rdiddly
Title rewrite:

 _Instagram Influencers Now Have Even Less Influence Over RDiddly_

------
elorant
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.

~~~
criddell
You see whatever you follow.

I know every single person I follow and have never seen provocative photos.

~~~
lowan12
This guy's following a bunch of Instagram thots and now he's complaining all
he sees are Instagram thots...

