The war against anonymity - Instagram

[moonbat]

I generally detest Instagram on principle; I have been using Flickr for photos since that service started and saw no reason to switch. Even less so when Facebook bought it. It is everything detestable about the modern web - closed silo, tracking you across whatever you do, short reels for the femtosecond attention span generation (which itself is a feature copied from Snapchat and now spread across all of Facebook Meta's properties - FB, Whatsapp and Instagram.

Yet after being pestered by friends to join just to see their pics I decided to create a dummy account since the wretched service forces you to login to view more than a couple of pics from the same account. A throwaway handle on SimpleLogin, and after entering the email verification code, I attempt to login - and am hit by a mobile number verification screen. Great. No way am I giving them my number, so I look for an online dummy number service for receiving SMSes. Several of them just don't work and finally I get one that does. I enter the SMS code and...

Instagram-verification.png

Needless to say, I am not going to bother. And oh yeah, I'm aware of bibliogram.art and other Instagram proxies similar to Invidious for Youtube; they never work and their ping times are in the six digits.

[Pentium4User]

I recommends getting rid of it. To view public profiles, you can use https://gramhir.com/.

I also don't care if "friends" want me to use it. If they want me to view their pictures, they provide a way that is ok for me. If not, they are not willing that I can view them.

[Nuck-TH]

This was long before this verification page was implemented - they just insta-banned(this pun was noticed only after whole message was written ) you after registration and you had to send similar selfie to their support instead of premade page. I refused as well ofc.

[moonbat]

I also don't care if "friends" want me to use it.

Yeah, that's been my position all along, I just thought having a placeholder account to get around the login requirement may help. Not if they're going to make it so hard to join anonymously.

[Night Wing]

Social Media is not the only place that asks for a mobile (cell) phone number after giving them a username and password. Comcast is doing the same thing to me since my ISP is Comcast and I do have a Comcast email account as well.

I chalked it up to trying to get a mobile phone number because Comcast sells mostly smartphones and two basic cell phones. But people like me don't have smartphones and don't want one. I do have a "new" old fashioned flip clam style cell phone and which I have never setup a voice mailbox for it.

When I got my new "basic" flip style cell phone from Verizon, all I ever got on my voice mailbox with my previous old cell phone was scam/phishing calls in my voice mailbox saying my Wells Fargo online account was hacked and to call the number in the voice mailbox. But I do not have a Wells Fargo online banking account since I do not bank at Wells Fargo.

Even if I had a Wells Fargo bank account, I would never give them my cell phone number. The result, with no voice mailbox, I don't have to clean out a voice mailbox every two weeks which normally contains "many" scam/phishing messages.

All the banks I do business with, they all have my landline phone number. I also do not have an online account with any of them. I do all of my banking business for all of the banks I have account with by using my landline phone.

Getting back on track.

When I give Comcast my username and password, instead of going to the Comcast website, I am sent to a page that asks for my mobile phone number. Under it, I have two choices which are: give Comcast my cell phone number or "ask me later".

But I do not click on the "ask me later" prompt. Instead; I again click on my bookmarked Comcast website address and then it takes me to my Comcast account, since I am already logged in because I had already given Comcast my username and password, which allows me to bypass the "page which wants my mobile cell phone number".

I have a feeling if you give your mobile cell phone numbers to any of these companies, they will sell your mobile phone number to anyone because this is valuable data to sell which makes money for any company which includes Comcast.

[Moonchild]

That level of "verification" is something I would only do for governmental institutions that I know for a fact have exceedingly stringent privacy policies and then only if I have no other choice like in-person visit for authentication. I would never do something like that for a commercial entity, least one I know is a data broker.

[LuftWafflePilot]

I am on the verge of deleting my Instagram account, partially because their security seems to be shit and someone somehow got access to my account several weeks ago despite using secure password and not opening fishy websites (I assume it must had something to do with how you connect IG to other services like Tinder etc.), and mostly because I keep getting banned several times a week in the past two weeks. I have no fucking idea what automated pile of horseshit is doing this and why, possibly a combination of using PM and those who gained access to my account still trying to log in with the old password, but having to type your phone number, verification code from a sms and verification code from email is really doing my head in.
I just use the stupid site to follow a few people whose content I like that isn't elsewhere, and it's not even working for that. Also being owned by Facebook really makes this borderline nope. I guess I might make the nope real soon.

[Night Wing]

@ LuftWafflePilot

Instagram does not like Pale Moon and discriminates against it. This is my impression. And I'll give you an example below.

I do not have an Instagram account and I have never had one. With that said, the designer (CJ Nelson) of my 9'3" Parallax single fin longboard does have an Instagram account.

He likes to post videos on Instagram. One video in particular, he is at a wave pool surfing a 9'3" Parallax just like mine. Since I don't have an Instagram account, I should not be able to see this video at the link below.

https://www.instagram.com/tv/B33lRRbCFk8/

But I do have a Jamboards account and I am always logged into the Jamboards site. As long as I am logged into Jamboards, if I click on the link above, even though I do not have an Instagram account, I can play the video as long as I am using either the Waterfox or Firefox browsers.

Even though I'm logged into the Jamboards site with Pale Moon, if I click on the link above, Instagram gives me a page which says the video is "no longer available or has moved".

In essence, Instagram isn't playing nicely with Pale Moon. At least it seems to me this is the case. If you want to see some of your friends content you like on Instagram, find out what other sites where you are logged into which should allow you to see the content for the some of the people on Instagram you follow.

[Moonchild]

In the interest of at least some form of balance, Instagram will be removed from the social panel of the default Pale Moon start portal. They've gone one step too far.

[LuftWafflePilot]

Ok I got disabled again and this time they want the selfie. Fuck them. Doesn't matter it gets deleted afterwards (but does it really?), this is just too much.

The worst part is you can't even delete your account or anything until you get past this point.

[bgstack15]

For browsing of specific links I am given, I swap out the domain name with imginn.org. It's a little on the slow side, but it appears to provide what I would generally expect instagram.com to provide to an unauthenticated user. I have never used authentication to that site so don't know what I'd be missing.

[moonbat]

Off-topic:
Flickr was so much better, one of the first Web 2.0 sites. It had tags and tag clouds (not stupid insta hashtags which can be any trendy phrase instead of being something descriptive about the photo), you could even add notes and annotations to a pic, and main thing is it was public by default. Yahoo ran it into the ground (like every other acquisition) by ignoring the general move towards mobile and delaying providing a mobile app around 2010-11, finally they sold it to someone else. Flickr should've been what Instagram became, Yahoo just let it eat their lunch. I would rather pay a pro subscription to continue using my Flickr where anyone can see my pics, than jump through so many hoops for stupid Insta.

[Moonchild]

Off-topic:

I would rather pay a pro subscription to continue using my Flickr where anyone can see my pics, than jump through so many hoops for stupid Insta.

The thing is that they count on networking pressure, i.e. "I'm gonna need it anyway sooner or later so may as well do this this one time". And bam they have people locked in after that, because it's seen as an "investment" even if just subconsciously. The very thing that makes it "annoying" also makes it a bit of explicit effort, and current internet users always want every bit of effort have value (you can blame the grindy completionist games for training people into that)

[moonbat]

Off-topic:

And bam they have people locked in after that, because it's seen as an "investment" even if just subconsciously.

And the network effect is so powerful, for example with Facebook - despite the Cambridge Analytica expose and their meddling in both recent US elections, people still stay on despite there being several alternate privacy focused services like MeWe that cropped up.

[fatboy]

Off-topic:

I have read stories about YT asking people to upload their driver's licenses or some form of official ID to verify their age. Absolutely ridiculous!
Facebook is really hungry for data, and they are essentially a data kiosk for the US government. I think the same goes for Google. I suspect they share this data with the Government to stave off proper regulation.
Facebook & Google are of the most malicious companies out there, a wolf in sheep's clothing

[Moonchild]

Off-topic:

they are essentially a data kiosk for the US government

Actually I don't think the US Government is all that involved here, as a whole. I think it's actually much more of a global corporate oversight thing than a governmental thing.

[LuftWafflePilot]

Just for the hell of it, I wanted to see what happens, so I did send them the stupid selfie. After all, it's not like my face wasn't on Instagram already.
After a day I got an email that looked like a scam (lol), no subject, from really weird address, with
"Hi,
We can’t give you access to this account or continue to process your request because we haven’t received an acceptable image to verify account ownership.
Thanks"
in it.
I thought omg, dipshits, my hand wasn't clearly visible or something, and wanted to try again - but to my surprise, the account was now banned for not following the guidelines or whatever, with no way to contact support, because it was already reviewed or some nonsense.

This verification process being one chance only surprised me quite a bit, and I thought I saw it all from the FB assmunchers.

edit:
Your account has been permanently disabled because it didn't follow our Community Guidelines. This decision can't be reversed either because we've already reviewed it or because 30 days have passed since your account was disabled. Learn more about why we disable accounts in our Community Guidelines.

Ain't that sweet.


It pisses me off, because I only followed a few accounts and am generally very picky about the content I digest, and IG doesn't really have any alternatives. And even if I wanted to eat my ego and start a new account, there's no way to remember what I followed. I also had some converations in there that are gone now, and I don't remember the names of the people, so really, this is fucked up. And worst part is I lost my account because of algorithms that decided I wasn't following the guidelines for whatever obscure reason.

[moonbat]

You fucked around with your main account instead of trying to create a new one? Genius.

[LuftWafflePilot]

Not sure what you mean...

[moonbat]

Your post sounded as though you have lost your main account where you follow other handles etc. I can't see how that would happen if you were trying to create a dummy account from scratch to login.