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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

#211

Post by Zak »

jerf wrote: post #179
cosmotic wrote: post #89

“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…

"How does blocking access help people view things?" Lieologists have discovered there's a hole in human cognition: If you say "We're doing X because of Y", human brains tend not to check Y very carefully at all. You can almost say "To help people view photos in Instagram, we're shutting down photo sharing in Instagram." You can't get away with a lie quite that bald. But you only need a few scraggly hair plugs on that…

I'd be surprised if this is true. Instead, I read things like this as "we're not going to tell you our reasons", and I suspect most other people do too.

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

#213

Post by dillutedfixer »

pmlnr wrote: post #196
dillutedfixer wrote: post #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 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.

Well I spoke too soon. Initially I did see the controls pop up on the bottom, but I just resized my browser window, and now for the life of me cannot get them to show up again. Oh well. I'll keep messing with it.

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

#214

Post by jerf »

Zak wrote: post #211
jerf wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"How does blocking access help people view things?" Lieologists have discovered there's a hole in human cognition: If you say "We're doing X because of Y", human brains tend not to check Y very carefully at all. You can almost say "To help people view photos in Instagram, we're shutting down photo sharing in Instagram." You can't get away with a lie quite that bald. But you only need a few scraggly hair plugs on that…

I'd be surprised if this is true. Instead, I read things like this as "we're not going to tell you our reasons", and I suspect most other people do too.

Well, rather than issue a lengthy explanation of why I think I'm right, I suggest this instead: Try turning the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon [1] to the forces of good, and keep an eye out for this sort of thing over the next month. Assuming that there's nothing special about what you do in the next month, the delta between the number of times you think about it in the next month vs. the amount you've thought about it in the previous month is a rough guess for the amount of times you've read a statement like this and it just passed you by with your brain not registering an objection.

If you do this honestly, betcha it's more than you think. It's something I see a lot, personally. In fact I tend to be surprised when someone public says "We're doing X because of Y" and it actually makes perfect sense. Most reasons given in the public sphere are quite garbage.

[1]: https://science.howstuffworks.com/life/inside-the-mind/human...

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

#215

Post by pmontra »

svantana wrote: post #210
lotyrin wrote: post #120

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.

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.

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.

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

#217

Post by hesk »

12xo wrote: post #16

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.

What do you think of Flickr?

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

#218

Post by 72deluxe »

cosmotic wrote: post #89

“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…

Based on the insane amount of telemetry that Instagram sends back even on iPhone (look at all the "engagement" domains it looks up - loads!) just to scroll up and down and look at pictures, I am guessing this is marketing speak for "we want to track you more".

Run a pi-hole and you'll be surprised (or not, depending on your cynicism).

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

#219

Post by hutzlibu »

koheripbal wrote: post #205
hutzlibu wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There are - they are called "children", and there are hundreds of millions of them among Instagram's user base.

Hm, true a bit, but also children are not so naive .. and those who are, would not read that text and just click and fill out until they get again, what they want.

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

#220

Post by joveian »

basch wrote: post #57
nakodari wrote: post #35

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.

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.

In that case they should return book results also, which are usually the highest quality.
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