4 ms·

Maybe it's just me, but I dislike the whole concept of advertising in places that aren't related to shopping. I go to Instagram to look at my friends' pictures,

Maybe it's just me, but I dislike the whole concept of advertising in places that aren't related to shopping. I go to Instagram to look at my friends' pictures, not to be sold something I don't actually need. If I were to shop, I'd go to a mall, thank you very much. Anyway, at some point Instagram ads (especially the autoplaying video kind, with sound) drove me crazy enough that out came jadx and apktool and I found a beautiful way to inject my own code into Instagram's networking. The code I injected rewrites the API responses before the rest of the app sees them. I can now scroll through my feed without annoying salesmen begging for my attention. I've also enabled a "secret" debugging menu while at it, where there are manual overrides for server-side settings, and there are at least several hundred of them — it's a bit creepy what they're A/B testing, like slightly different wording or different button colors. The only problem that still remains is that the feed is still algorithmic, and there's nothing that could be done with that with client patches.

0x0nyandesu 5y ago
It's definitely just you. Women go on Instagram to see fashion with links to shopping "the look".
- Broken_Hippo 5y ago
  Some people go to instagram for fashion, but that is definitely not all women nor just women. I personally just wear a black shirt and black pants almost every day, am not all that interested in fashion, and am a woman.
  - coldtea 5y ago
    >Some people go to instagram for fashion, but that is definitely not all women nor just women. No, but it is the third option you ommited: mostly women (doing that).
    - OJFord 5y ago
      Great, does it matter? I think GGP's comment's point was that some do want that. They said 'women' but I don't think it really matters (or affects the point) who it is.
  - stirfish 5y ago
    Are you on Instagram? If so, do you find the fashion ads annoying? I just scrolled through Instagram and I think they changed the ads. I still want to shoot myself, but I'm not getting any ads for weapons anymore
  - fieryskiff11 5y ago
    YWNBAW
    - stirfish 5y ago
      You are not welcome here. Get out.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
Izikiel43 5y ago
How do you detect ads? If not in following empty response?
- grishka 5y ago
  Ad posts have additional fields in them. They have to, because they're shown in the UI as "sponsored" and with extra buttons and stuff. Ad stories are retrieved via a separate request, so it just suffices to either return an empty response or throw an exception from there.
bat_sy 5y ago
Can you share the modified apk or any tutorial to make similar modified Instagram apk?
- grishka 5y ago
  I did a thread on xda a while ago: https://forum.xda-developers.com/t/app-mod-4-4-instagram-without-ads-and-annoyances.3927066/ https://forum.xda-developers.com/t/app-mod-4-4-instagram-wit...
- NeoLaval 5y ago
  https://thedise.me/instander/ https://thedise.me/instander/
  - grishka 5y ago
    This isn't mine but it does use my approach to ad blocking.
draw_down 5y ago
Yes my friend, maybe it’s just you that dislikes ads. Maybe you’re totally unique and alone in the universe with that opinion. Maybe, maybe.
distances 5y ago
I wonder why they left the debugging stuff in live release builds. Common best practice for Android is to have a separate build flavor with debug settings and layouts, and make sure they aren't included in live builds.
FearlessNebula 5y ago
I’d love to read a write up on how you did that. I wonder if it’s possible that one endpoint returns a chronological feed whereas another endpoint returns an algorithmic field?
- grishka 5y ago
  In short. The HTTP client Instagram uses (Proxygen) is written in C++, which means it needs JNI bindings, which means those classes are necessarily excluded from obfuscation. I decompiled the dexes into human-readable bytecode (smali) using apktool, compiled my own class with additional code to strip ads, converted it to dex, decompiled that into smali, added that to instagram smali files, added calls into my class in the JNI classes, and, finally, put it all back together with apktool. I didn't want to touch the obfuscated parts because that would make the patch break with every version. Though I did have to touch them to enable the debug menu. I should also probably make this in the form of an Xposed module. Do people even use Xposed any more?
  - FearlessNebula 5y ago
    Doesn’t compiling the code into an executable inherently obfuscate it?
    - stirfish 5y ago
      Good question, but no. Obfuscation is an additional step you can take to make it harder to turn that executable back into code.
      - FearlessNebula 5y ago
        So with obfuscation you can still decompile the binary into source code, but that version of the source code is much less human-readable and it would take more effort for a human to go through and understand it?
        5y ago
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

0x0nyandesu 5y ago

It's definitely just you. Women go on Instagram to see fashion with links to shopping "the look".

Broken_Hippo 5y ago
Some people go to instagram for fashion, but that is definitely not all women nor just women. I personally just wear a black shirt and black pants almost every day, am not all that interested in fashion, and am a woman.
- coldtea 5y ago
  >Some people go to instagram for fashion, but that is definitely not all women nor just women. No, but it is the third option you ommited: mostly women (doing that).
  - OJFord 5y ago
    Great, does it matter? I think GGP's comment's point was that some do want that. They said 'women' but I don't think it really matters (or affects the point) who it is.
- stirfish 5y ago
  Are you on Instagram? If so, do you find the fashion ads annoying? I just scrolled through Instagram and I think they changed the ads. I still want to shoot myself, but I'm not getting any ads for weapons anymore
- fieryskiff11 5y ago
  YWNBAW
  - stirfish 5y ago
    You are not welcome here. Get out.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

Izikiel43 5y ago

How do you detect ads? If not in following empty response?

grishka 5y ago
Ad posts have additional fields in them. They have to, because they're shown in the UI as "sponsored" and with extra buttons and stuff. Ad stories are retrieved via a separate request, so it just suffices to either return an empty response or throw an exception from there.

bat_sy 5y ago

Can you share the modified apk or any tutorial to make similar modified Instagram apk?

grishka 5y ago
I did a thread on xda a while ago: https://forum.xda-developers.com/t/app-mod-4-4-instagram-without-ads-and-annoyances.3927066/ https://forum.xda-developers.com/t/app-mod-4-4-instagram-wit...
NeoLaval 5y ago
https://thedise.me/instander/ https://thedise.me/instander/
- grishka 5y ago
  This isn't mine but it does use my approach to ad blocking.

draw_down 5y ago

Yes my friend, maybe it’s just you that dislikes ads. Maybe you’re totally unique and alone in the universe with that opinion. Maybe, maybe.

distances 5y ago

I wonder why they left the debugging stuff in live release builds. Common best practice for Android is to have a separate build flavor with debug settings and layouts, and make sure they aren't included in live builds.

FearlessNebula 5y ago

I’d love to read a write up on how you did that. I wonder if it’s possible that one endpoint returns a chronological feed whereas another endpoint returns an algorithmic field?

grishka 5y ago
In short. The HTTP client Instagram uses (Proxygen) is written in C++, which means it needs JNI bindings, which means those classes are necessarily excluded from obfuscation. I decompiled the dexes into human-readable bytecode (smali) using apktool, compiled my own class with additional code to strip ads, converted it to dex, decompiled that into smali, added that to instagram smali files, added calls into my class in the JNI classes, and, finally, put it all back together with apktool. I didn't want to touch the obfuscated parts because that would make the patch break with every version. Though I did have to touch them to enable the debug menu. I should also probably make this in the form of an Xposed module. Do people even use Xposed any more?
- FearlessNebula 5y ago
  Doesn’t compiling the code into an executable inherently obfuscate it?
  - stirfish 5y ago
    Good question, but no. Obfuscation is an additional step you can take to make it harder to turn that executable back into code.
    - FearlessNebula 5y ago
      So with obfuscation you can still decompile the binary into source code, but that version of the source code is much less human-readable and it would take more effort for a human to go through and understand it?
      - 5y ago

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]