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It looks like Instagram is starting to feel the shockwaves of Facebook's issues. Here I was hoping that Instagram would not go down the same path as Facebook, b

by hw 9y ago

It looks like Instagram is starting to feel the shockwaves of Facebook's issues. Here I was hoping that Instagram would not go down the same path as Facebook, but I guess that was only a matter of time. As a developer building and maintaining IG apps, it's extremely frustrating not just for me but also my clients who depend on apps we build to manage their Instagram. This also comes on the heels of IG dialing down their API limits from ~5000 per hour to 200 per hour [0], which is ridiculously low. If my app has 20 IG accounts connected to it, each account can only hit 10 per hour. Crippling. [0]: https://9to5mac.com/2018/04/03/instagram-api-limits/ https://9to5mac.com/2018/04/03/instagram-api-limits/

charlesdm 9y ago
I always thought these rate limits often to be ridiculous. Same applies to Twitter -- they have quite a restrictive API with few opportunities to get the query rate increased. Honestly, do they want people to build scrapers using sets of IP addresses?
- hw 9y ago
  Rate limits aside, Twitter's APIs are horrendously unreliable. Plenty of timeouts, 500s, and over-capacity errors. Are all these big tech companies spending way too much money on employees and not enough on their actual product, infrastructure and security of such product?
  - mschuster91 9y ago
    > Are all these big tech companies spending way too much money on employees and not enough on their actual product, infrastructure and security of such product? No. They are allocating their money where their business is. The idea of "ecosystems" with 3rd party integrations has been shot down nearly everywhere - all the "big tech companies" have one thing in common: they want people to be locked in their environment as long as possible by any means neccessary and legal, as this is where the tasty ad revenue comes from. A 3rd party Twitter client, for example, cannot show ads (and, so, generate no revenue for Twitter). Therefore, it is perfectly logical that Twitter makes their API as bad as possible for 3rd party clients (e.g. no polls, images in DMs, group DMs).
    - adventured 9y ago
      On the upside, it's blatantly obvious there's a massive opportunity for new platforms with liberal APIs that stick to keeping them open. From my observation in the years since Twitter turned against their ecosystem, I think developers have grown increasingly desperate for this.
      - mschuster91 9y ago
        > I think developers have grown increasingly desperate for this. Developers have. But unfortunately, most that the users (aka our customers) want is a place where they can share cat videos, have instant communication with friends and (distant) relatives and, depending on allegiance, Trump or Clinton memes in peace. There are only two things that can not be done on the social networks: gambling and porn. Everything other has been slowly absorbed, especially by Facebook. Also: when you're working 10+ hours a day or more, you most often don't have time to maintain your own blog, much less a full blown web server. There's the reason why Instagram, FB and Twitter are so damn successful: they're essentially frictionless after the sign-up process.
    - solatic 9y ago
      Correction: they want their content consumers to be as locked into their environment as possible. Content producers, on the other hand, are the ones who are making your platform more attractive to your content consumers. You want to make it as easy as possible to put high-quality content on your platform, and a key component of ease of access / publishing is a powerful API.
  - brianwawok 9y ago
    > Are all these big tech companies spending way too much money on employees and not enough on their actual product Do they make more money when someone fires up the IG app and watches ads, or a third party tool sucks data out and displays it elsewhere? The developer API is not the product.
charlieegan3 9y ago
The sandbox limits are what bother me. They make the API basically useless for side-project type experiments. I really enjoy Instagram the app to post photos of my travels but as the years go by it's feeling more and more locked down. I'm not really sure what the alternatives are, Flickr?
- JasonFruit 9y ago
  You could put up a website.
  - charlieegan3 9y ago
    I have! https://photos.charlieegan3.com/ https://photos.charlieegan3.com/ The I just need an app to make it easy to post. Instagram is the best I've found for that.
    - ElFitz 9y ago
      Well, if you have an iOS device, maybe Workflow (the app) can help you with that ?
    - JasonFruit 9y ago
      You're quite a photographer - some really striking work there!
      - charlieegan3 9y ago
        Thank you! I get a lot of fun out of it.
  - bobthepanda 9y ago
    Even better, put up a platform. That's how Youtube started.

by hw 9y ago

charlesdm 9y ago

I always thought these rate limits often to be ridiculous. Same applies to Twitter -- they have quite a restrictive API with few opportunities to get the query rate increased. Honestly, do they want people to build scrapers using sets of IP addresses?

hw 9y ago
Rate limits aside, Twitter's APIs are horrendously unreliable. Plenty of timeouts, 500s, and over-capacity errors. Are all these big tech companies spending way too much money on employees and not enough on their actual product, infrastructure and security of such product?
- mschuster91 9y ago
  > Are all these big tech companies spending way too much money on employees and not enough on their actual product, infrastructure and security of such product? No. They are allocating their money where their business is. The idea of "ecosystems" with 3rd party integrations has been shot down nearly everywhere - all the "big tech companies" have one thing in common: they want people to be locked in their environment as long as possible by any means neccessary and legal, as this is where the tasty ad revenue comes from. A 3rd party Twitter client, for example, cannot show ads (and, so, generate no revenue for Twitter). Therefore, it is perfectly logical that Twitter makes their API as bad as possible for 3rd party clients (e.g. no polls, images in DMs, group DMs).
  - adventured 9y ago
    On the upside, it's blatantly obvious there's a massive opportunity for new platforms with liberal APIs that stick to keeping them open. From my observation in the years since Twitter turned against their ecosystem, I think developers have grown increasingly desperate for this.
    - mschuster91 9y ago
      > I think developers have grown increasingly desperate for this. Developers have. But unfortunately, most that the users (aka our customers) want is a place where they can share cat videos, have instant communication with friends and (distant) relatives and, depending on allegiance, Trump or Clinton memes in peace. There are only two things that can not be done on the social networks: gambling and porn. Everything other has been slowly absorbed, especially by Facebook. Also: when you're working 10+ hours a day or more, you most often don't have time to maintain your own blog, much less a full blown web server. There's the reason why Instagram, FB and Twitter are so damn successful: they're essentially frictionless after the sign-up process.
  - solatic 9y ago
    Correction: they want their content consumers to be as locked into their environment as possible. Content producers, on the other hand, are the ones who are making your platform more attractive to your content consumers. You want to make it as easy as possible to put high-quality content on your platform, and a key component of ease of access / publishing is a powerful API.
- brianwawok 9y ago
  > Are all these big tech companies spending way too much money on employees and not enough on their actual product Do they make more money when someone fires up the IG app and watches ads, or a third party tool sucks data out and displays it elsewhere? The developer API is not the product.

charlieegan3 9y ago

The sandbox limits are what bother me. They make the API basically useless for side-project type experiments. I really enjoy Instagram the app to post photos of my travels but as the years go by it's feeling more and more locked down. I'm not really sure what the alternatives are, Flickr?

JasonFruit 9y ago
You could put up a website.
- charlieegan3 9y ago
  I have! https://photos.charlieegan3.com/ https://photos.charlieegan3.com/ The I just need an app to make it easy to post. Instagram is the best I've found for that.
  - ElFitz 9y ago
    Well, if you have an iOS device, maybe Workflow (the app) can help you with that ?
  - JasonFruit 9y ago
    You're quite a photographer - some really striking work there!
    - charlieegan3 9y ago
      Thank you! I get a lot of fun out of it.
- bobthepanda 9y ago
  Even better, put up a platform. That's how Youtube started.