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Instagram no longer allows people without an account to view photos on computers

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Re: Instagram no longer allows people without an account to view photos on computers

#181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

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.

Re: Instagram no longer allows people without an account to view photos on computers

#183
post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Also it makes scraping much harder.

All images are still available on the web even delivers everything as JSON. Plenty tools like JDownlaoder can scrap everything in a seconds. they sure have other measurements in place to stop people form doing that large scale.

Re: Instagram no longer allows people without an account to view photos on computers

#184
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?

Re: Instagram no longer allows people without an account to view photos on computers

#185
post #138
post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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/

Re: Instagram no longer allows people without an account to view photos on computers

#186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

Re: Instagram no longer allows people without an account to view photos on computers

#188
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).

Re: Instagram no longer allows people without an account to view photos on computers

#189
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.

Re: Instagram no longer allows people without an account to view photos on computers

#190

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
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