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by taytus 3382 days ago
Full Disclosure: I'm the developer of statimgram.com

I believe Instagram will continue to keep growing, and I wanted to help advertisers and users to have more tools to engage and reach their followers.

Now with statimgram, you can schedule and post from the browser not only regular posts, but also directly into IG stories.

We are launching next week, and I'm opening the API to developers as well, if you want early access please message me.

2 comments

Word of caution: I've been running a business like yours for two years. We've had "the talk" with Facebook's lawyers. You say the use of the word 'gram' only applies to using their API? Wrong. You will see once you grow to more than a handful of accounts. We've resolved this.

Also, your method will 100% get people blocked. You say it's secret sauce, but you don't seem to take into account that most people here are tech folk. There are only so many ways. I know, and I guarantee it, that you use Instagram's private API by imitating the Android app. This is tripple-wrong. You violate their community terms, you violate reverse-engineering terms and you don't communicate this to your customers.

Anyone who asks for someone else's Instagram credentials automatically is in breach of their terms. So none of our businesses would even be possible. But there clearly is room for interpretation (and I've talked through this with their lawyers, too). But your approach is not where the flexibility is at the moment.

Any social-media agency is asking their clients for credentials. They violate the terms, there is no ifs and buts. Still, this will be fine. Instagram isn't entirely robotic. But you've got to approach it from the right side of things. Use the official unmodified app, use a real phone. That's the minimum. We've been running a business on those (tough) minimum requirements, and service some of the largest brands in the world. They are aware of the risk that anything can happen to their accounts at any time. But our adherence to the crucial parts helps us stay above board.

I appreciate the words of caution. I really do. Your service also asks for IG credentials, so I wonder how is that different than what we do.
Read again, it's not about the credentials as agencies do exactly the same. It's about the posting mechanism. And the 'gram'. I feel you, this is a tough place to be, there's a lot of money waiting, everyone needs a solution – but talking to the private API is not the way to go about it.
Does this violate their terms of service? I've heard they do not want desktop uploading or any form of uploading media through the API. I can't seem to find an API reference for uploading on api.instagram.com
We provide a full "end to end" posting service requiring no intervention from you after you have scheduled your posts (no push notifications to your phone and you having to open the Instagram app to post it for example. We don't use IG's API.
> We don't use IG's API.

This suggests that you're either using people, have found an effective automated method, or have reached agreement with IG.

If the first: how well will that scale with growth? If the second: what happens when the block this current method, or otherwise block your ability to do this because it violates some obscure ToS clause?

If the third: congratulations and best of luck!

All I can say is that this is indeed an automated method. All that IG receives is a https call from an Android phone. We can't go on details because this is our secret sauce (but we are opening our API so other developers can do the same).
is this the secret sauce? https://github.com/mgp25/Instagram-API

the work the Spanish developer puts into this 3rd party API is crazy and all the issues are from Indian spammers demanding he fixes it!

This one seems fairly representable, and great: https://github.com/mgp25/Instagram-API/issues/1097
IANAL

But that is the issue, you as a developer and provider may not run afoul of the terms directly, but your users will.

Section 10 in the Basic Terms forbids accessing Instagrams Private API's.

And if that isn't being used and you are a user of Instagram are running afoul of Section 4 of those terms in soliciting, collecting, or using the login credentials of other users. As well as your naming being in conflict with Terms and trademarks.

Unless you're offering the service, through a reminder system with push notifications, you or yoru customer is probably breaking the Terms somewhere. You should probably have a lawyer verify that you're not running straight into a legal mess.

I think the part that you are missing is that nobody cares about company Terms of Service.

The consequences are nonexistent to negligible at best.

If in this case Instagram kills someone's account because of this service, then Statimgram takes on the possible liability of damages if its worth it to the brand.

Having an understanding of how people spin up accounts on Instagram and build mass real targeted followers quickly and cheaply, it wouldn't even be worth it to sue. But again, Statimgram's liability. Low risk proposition though.

> The consequences are nonexistent to negligible at best.

Unless you build a business model around violating them, and they shut you down when they discover it...

Arbitrary changes are always a risk when it comes to building for a third party platform, but if you're violating the ToS from the start, it's just asking for a 'worst case' scenario for your company and customers.

> The consequences are nonexistent to negligible at best.

Not in all cases. I work for a company that has a Facebook app at its core, and while we'd love to use a service like this to post to Instagram, it'd risk Facebook shutting our main app's access to the Facebook API down.

Sounds like they're using Android emulators to simulate button presses, uploads, etc. without using IG's API.
Their terms of service also prohibit apps from using "gram" in the name.
This is correct for applications using IG's API. This is not the case for statimgram.
Using private API's while also infringing on their terms, basically guaranteeing that your service will be blocked the minute it has any type of traction.
Your bigger concern should probably be Facebook's trademark lawyers.