Instagram no longer allows people without an account to view photos on computers • Hacker News Board

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

#111

Post by inopinatus » Thu, Apr 23, 2020, 6:44 PM UTC

chillacy wrote: post #75

inopinatus wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not. I’ve had a similar experience, and I walked away. Instagram is everything poisonous about Facebook’s values and platform and practices, distilled. They get nothing from me except a temporary email address, a proxy IP, and a false user-agent string.

I'm going to gander a wild guess and say the combination of temporary email address, proxy IP, and false UA string are likely to trip up fake account detection ML algorithms.

The UA string is real, just misleading. The other two resources aren’t public throwaways, the domain and source addresses belong to me, or a version of me (as much as IANA allocated resources can “belong”) and otherwise appear normal, but are only used for traffic to untrustworthy shitweasels.

It’s not impossible, but it is unlikely that it looks like a bot.

I figured it was actually the other way around, or at least a slightly different shade of things; not so much that it looked like a fake account, more than it looked like someone they couldn’t correlate to any other identity and therefore has no consumer surveillance value, ergo I can either fill in the blanks, or fuck off. Whatever the truth of it, I chose the latter

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

#112

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Apr 23, 2020, 6:44 PM UTC

sjroot wrote: post #23

fao_ wrote: post #15

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 i…

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. :)

[deleted]

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

#113

Post by starpilot » Thu, Apr 23, 2020, 6:45 PM UTC

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.

"I hate the current norm for successful social media apps that make billions of dollars"

Just a reminder, HN viewpoints do not matter at all.

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

#114

Post by blueblisters » Thu, Apr 23, 2020, 6:45 PM UTC

sjroot wrote: post #23

fao_ wrote: post #15

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 i…

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. :)

I had this experience when I was working with the Facebook Ad Manager.

They arbitrarily blocked my @domain account while my ads were running. They asked me to submit IDs and stuff but haven't heard back in 2 weeks. No other way to contact support except wait.

I am not sure what flagged my account but I wouldn't be surprised if they have significantly lowered the threshold for threat detection in an election year (especially after the scandals uncovered from 2016).

Definitely terrible from a customer experience PoV.

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

#115

Post by stevewodil » Thu, Apr 23, 2020, 6:45 PM UTC

covercash wrote: post #73

disiplus wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i had the same thing happen. if i remember correctly the email+label@gmail.com plus signing on the web made it throw error.

I hate when sites don’t accept + modified email addresses.

As someone working to launch an app, this isn't something that I was terribly concerned with handling before launch, but I now have a question.

Is the best way to handle this to allow the '+' symbol in email addresses, but verify that the underlying email address hasn't already been registered so that one email address still can't create multiple accounts?

So if you sign up with covercash+123@gmail.com, should I check the prefix ("covercash") with the domain ("gmail.com") and make sure there aren't any matches already registered like covercash@gmail.com or covercash+111@gmail.com?

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

#116

Post by lmilcin » Thu, Apr 23, 2020, 6:50 PM UTC

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…

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.

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

#117

Post by anonymousab » Thu, Apr 23, 2020, 6:51 PM UTC

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…

I sometimes start to wonder how many of the people spewing these "we're ensuring you have the best experience by forcing you to use [some arbitrary, hated experience] exclusively" lines actually believe them.

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

#118

Post by inopinatus » Thu, Apr 23, 2020, 6:53 PM UTC

stevewodil wrote: post #115

covercash wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hate when sites don’t accept + modified email addresses.

As someone working to launch an app, this isn't something that I was terribly concerned with handling before launch, but I now have a question. Is the best way to handle this to allow the '+' symbol in email addresses, but verify that the underlying email address hasn't already been registered so that one email address still can't create multiple accounts? So if you sign up with covercash+123@gmail.com, should I chec…

No. That is super hostile to your users, and besides the use of + as recipient delimiter is a convention, not a standardised behaviour.

You will get false positives, and you will get irate users, often rejecting perhaps some of your most promising early adopters.

See also: case sensitivity in the left-hand part of an address.

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

#119

Post by gravitas » Thu, Apr 23, 2020, 6:53 PM UTC

ABeeSea wrote: post #80

iamthepieman wrote: post #27

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…

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.

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/ - 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.

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

#120

Post by lotyrin » Thu, Apr 23, 2020, 6:55 PM UTC

lmilcin wrote: post #116

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…

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.