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
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…
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.