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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

#191
post #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…

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.

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

#192

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…

> 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.

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

#193
post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same thing happened to me, and I tried to email them about a clear bug that occurs. They wanted the same photo verification. I was very nice in the correspondence until they requested photo verification a second time, and I was so confused why they were being so incompetent about it. It's a 0 follower account that I never had access to in the first place because it instantly got disabled, why would I care? Just fix t…

It blows my mind that people still use Facebook products. I disconnected in like... idk 2014? 2015? And never looked back.

It's unpopular amongst "hackers" to devalidate the use of FB products in this way.

For better or worse, that's apparent from this.

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

#194
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.

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

#195
... 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

_Trouble is, it's becoming hard to maintain cross-posting or even just copying your own stuff from silos, which I find outrageous._

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

#196

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 quali…

> 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.

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

#197

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.

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)

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

#198

“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 doe…

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.

I really don't think there are sheeps around who actually believe that. Everybody knows this is just marketing speak in a way, marketing people are expected to speak.

Or maybe, there are people who would believe it, but they have an account already. And most simple do not care. They read, they have to create an account to get the content, so they do create an account.

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

#200
post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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).

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