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The tool you used appears to be a browser plug-in, meaning it operates by scraping the Instagram website from the client side. Instagram (and most sites) forbid

The tool you used appears to be a browser plug-in, meaning it operates by scraping the Instagram website from the client side. Instagram (and most sites) forbid scraping tools like this. For future reference: Don’t use 3rd-party scraping tools on your social media accounts. They will generate thousands of API requests and trigger bot detection. You obviously didn’t intend for this to happen, but from the company’s perspective it’s equivalent to bot/scraper abuse.

MikeUt 6y ago
There's a big difference between scraping and posting. Companies putting both into the "bot" category is intentionally conflating the two, so they can ban user-empowering behavior (reading with unauthorized software, i.e. scraping) with the excuse that they were targeting spam and similar.
- hctaw 6y ago
  Allowing third parties to collect user data without their knowledge is not "user empowering." Users agreed to Instagram having access to that data, not OP's company to collect it through instagram using a tool that collects who knows what and sends it who knows where.
  - MikeUt 6y ago
    Tech giants can spy all they want and sell that data to whoever they want, but letting others access data they can already see otherwise in a more convenient way would be intruding on privacy?
    - hctaw 6y ago
      It's about consent. A user gives explicit consent for a company like Instagram to have access to data. They don't give it to random third parties to scrape. And no, they can't sell it to whoever they want (or at least that's a reduction of how Facebook and Google use your data). They do monetize the data with their internal advertising platforms that they sell to people like OP, rather than letting anyone monetize the data without the knowledge or consent of their users.
      - MikeUt 6y ago
        So users "explicitly consent" (as signaled by continued use of Instagram) to all of Instagram/Facebook's data collection, as well as to letting random third parties read their posts, as long as those random third parties don't automate that reading? That would be a step too far in privacy invasion? How convenient Facebook cares about privacy exactly when it's in their financial interest, and even more convenient all their users draw the exact same line.
        nemothekid 6y ago
        Yes, if you remember, this is exactly the scandal that was Cambridge Analytica. The user also consents that their data is used in a certain way. For example, if you scraped tinder profiles and published a map of all tinder users in a city most would agree that’s a privacy invasion.
        OriolRoda 6y ago
        We were checking how many followers had each of our own followers. This is available information in their profile. Only that going over 37,000 manually is not feasible
        msh 6y ago
        But why would you be allowed to store that data?
        hctaw 6y ago
        That's a good example actually. Instagram/FB don't let third parties have access to your posts more than you allow publicly, and don't let you use automated tools to scrape them. If you wanted to glean anything from those posts you need to buy the anonymized data from Facebook. The only way to balance the desire of users to make some data public and prevent anyone from grabbing all of it forever is to ban people from using automated tools.
    - akudha 6y ago
      Right or wrong, that is how things stand today. Companies (websites) go to extraordinary lengths to please Google (SEO etc) and want Google to crawl/index their sites. But they will unleash their lawyers on some kid that scrapes data and builds something useful (remember how Craigslist went after someone who built a better/simpler interface few years ago?) Plus users agreed to tech giants' terms of service (it is a different story that almost no-one reads them and have any understanding of them in the real sense) whereas users did not agree to OP using some tool to scrape their data. Maybe this is not fair but it is how things are
    - charwalker 6y ago
      I said Facebook and anyone partnered with them could use my data and that does not include Startup1 and their third party tool. OP probably should have investigated the third party tool and entered a contract where their scraping was legit and if they got burned the third party was at fault. Instead they just iced 100k a year without thinking through the risks. Hopefully that doesn't apply to the rest of the business ex subsisting on a single revenue stream.
- loa_in_ 6y ago
  > There's a big difference between scraping and posting. We do not know what the 3rd party software does or how it does it. > Then we used a program to analyze our followers This suggests it does way more than post.
  - MikeUt 6y ago
    "Analyze" can be as simple as "cross-reference follower names with some other database". So nothing a user with read-only access to their company account couldn't manually do.
    - loa_in_ 6y ago
      It could, but it also could be social graph analysis, and that would issue a request for each of the profiles.
wtf_is_up 6y ago
Not surprising Facebook would take a hard stance on 3rd party scraping tools after the CA fallout.
- Lammy 6y ago
  Except CA wasn't third-party and wasn't scraping.
  - edoceo 6y ago
    Right, and can still be the trigger for the visible fallout
    - bdcravens 6y ago
      A few years ago there was a ton of websites that did little more than copy Instagram photos and put their own ads around it. I suspect putting an end to those was the point.
- that_guy_iain 6y ago
  I was working at an influencer marketing company just after the CA. They lost their API access and mostly it seemed like it was teh fallout from CA. But the CEO talked to the guy in charge of Instagram for Europe and he said the main issue Facebook has with it is that they're not part of the value chain. Basically, you're competing with us for marketing on our platform we're going to hinder your ability to do so. To me, how they lock people out of Insta is not about what CA did, it's about stopping competitors.
that_guy_iain 6y ago
> Instagram (and most sites) forbid scraping tools like this. It's important to note that LinkedIn got taken to court over blocking a company from scraping. They lost. They may won in appeal but considering the whole what is public is public approach from the courts I doubt they will have. The clause in tos saying you can't scrape isn't valid
- bathtub365 6y ago
  Even if it isn’t valid, someone still has to take them to court for it. That’s often a high enough barrier to allow them to get away with bad behaviour without anyone doing anything.
  - that_guy_iain 6y ago
    No, they can just bypass any attempt to stop them. It just becomes a case of whack-a-mole which FB or any other site knows they can never win. They will threaten legal action first. That is how influencerdb got taken down, Facebook threatened them and influencerdb didn't have the heart to go to court.

MikeUt 6y ago

There's a big difference between scraping and posting. Companies putting both into the "bot" category is intentionally conflating the two, so they can ban user-empowering behavior (reading with unauthorized software, i.e. scraping) with the excuse that they were targeting spam and similar.

hctaw 6y ago
Allowing third parties to collect user data without their knowledge is not "user empowering." Users agreed to Instagram having access to that data, not OP's company to collect it through instagram using a tool that collects who knows what and sends it who knows where.
- MikeUt 6y ago
  Tech giants can spy all they want and sell that data to whoever they want, but letting others access data they can already see otherwise in a more convenient way would be intruding on privacy?
  - hctaw 6y ago
    It's about consent. A user gives explicit consent for a company like Instagram to have access to data. They don't give it to random third parties to scrape. And no, they can't sell it to whoever they want (or at least that's a reduction of how Facebook and Google use your data). They do monetize the data with their internal advertising platforms that they sell to people like OP, rather than letting anyone monetize the data without the knowledge or consent of their users.
    - MikeUt 6y ago
      So users "explicitly consent" (as signaled by continued use of Instagram) to all of Instagram/Facebook's data collection, as well as to letting random third parties read their posts, as long as those random third parties don't automate that reading? That would be a step too far in privacy invasion? How convenient Facebook cares about privacy exactly when it's in their financial interest, and even more convenient all their users draw the exact same line.
      - nemothekid 6y ago
        Yes, if you remember, this is exactly the scandal that was Cambridge Analytica. The user also consents that their data is used in a certain way. For example, if you scraped tinder profiles and published a map of all tinder users in a city most would agree that’s a privacy invasion.
        OriolRoda 6y ago
        We were checking how many followers had each of our own followers. This is available information in their profile. Only that going over 37,000 manually is not feasible
        msh 6y ago
        But why would you be allowed to store that data?
      - hctaw 6y ago
        That's a good example actually. Instagram/FB don't let third parties have access to your posts more than you allow publicly, and don't let you use automated tools to scrape them. If you wanted to glean anything from those posts you need to buy the anonymized data from Facebook. The only way to balance the desire of users to make some data public and prevent anyone from grabbing all of it forever is to ban people from using automated tools.
  - akudha 6y ago
    Right or wrong, that is how things stand today. Companies (websites) go to extraordinary lengths to please Google (SEO etc) and want Google to crawl/index their sites. But they will unleash their lawyers on some kid that scrapes data and builds something useful (remember how Craigslist went after someone who built a better/simpler interface few years ago?) Plus users agreed to tech giants' terms of service (it is a different story that almost no-one reads them and have any understanding of them in the real sense) whereas users did not agree to OP using some tool to scrape their data. Maybe this is not fair but it is how things are
  - charwalker 6y ago
    I said Facebook and anyone partnered with them could use my data and that does not include Startup1 and their third party tool. OP probably should have investigated the third party tool and entered a contract where their scraping was legit and if they got burned the third party was at fault. Instead they just iced 100k a year without thinking through the risks. Hopefully that doesn't apply to the rest of the business ex subsisting on a single revenue stream.
loa_in_ 6y ago
> There's a big difference between scraping and posting. We do not know what the 3rd party software does or how it does it. > Then we used a program to analyze our followers This suggests it does way more than post.
- MikeUt 6y ago
  "Analyze" can be as simple as "cross-reference follower names with some other database". So nothing a user with read-only access to their company account couldn't manually do.
  - loa_in_ 6y ago
    It could, but it also could be social graph analysis, and that would issue a request for each of the profiles.

wtf_is_up 6y ago

Not surprising Facebook would take a hard stance on 3rd party scraping tools after the CA fallout.

Lammy 6y ago
Except CA wasn't third-party and wasn't scraping.
- edoceo 6y ago
  Right, and can still be the trigger for the visible fallout
  - bdcravens 6y ago
    A few years ago there was a ton of websites that did little more than copy Instagram photos and put their own ads around it. I suspect putting an end to those was the point.
that_guy_iain 6y ago
I was working at an influencer marketing company just after the CA. They lost their API access and mostly it seemed like it was teh fallout from CA. But the CEO talked to the guy in charge of Instagram for Europe and he said the main issue Facebook has with it is that they're not part of the value chain. Basically, you're competing with us for marketing on our platform we're going to hinder your ability to do so. To me, how they lock people out of Insta is not about what CA did, it's about stopping competitors.

that_guy_iain 6y ago

> Instagram (and most sites) forbid scraping tools like this. It's important to note that LinkedIn got taken to court over blocking a company from scraping. They lost. They may won in appeal but considering the whole what is public is public approach from the courts I doubt they will have. The clause in tos saying you can't scrape isn't valid

bathtub365 6y ago
Even if it isn’t valid, someone still has to take them to court for it. That’s often a high enough barrier to allow them to get away with bad behaviour without anyone doing anything.
- that_guy_iain 6y ago
  No, they can just bypass any attempt to stop them. It just becomes a case of whack-a-mole which FB or any other site knows they can never win. They will threaten legal action first. That is how influencerdb got taken down, Facebook threatened them and influencerdb didn't have the heart to go to court.