[tomc1985]

With ads every other or third post or so, you don't get nearly as much control over your feed as you think.

> Just follow the accounts you like, mute the ones you don't but 'need' to follow (friends, etc.)

If I had a penny for every time someone here casually drops such milquetoast advice (that DOESNT WORK), I'd be rich.

[jakear]

Goalposts drifting faster than my kayak in a windstorm.

First you say there's too many faces, I give you an easy solution. Now you say there's too many ads, I say to make a script that pulls in latest images from a set of accounts using Instagram's Basic Display API.

Next you'll probably say you don't want to do any actual work, but also won't pay someone else to do work, in which case I have no solutions.

[tomc1985]

My point is that a casual "just change your feed settings," answer, which signals an implicit approval for a shitty status quo, doesn't work.

What I want is for people to change. For society to stop navel-gazing. For people to get over themselves. It's idealistic, for sure. But I am an idealist.

And for the record, those ads are going to show you more obnoxiously smiley faces, but this time they're hawking some bullshit product on top of it. So unless you can make the ads go away, whatever you set your feed to won't matter.

[jakear]

Literally write a script. The scripts other people are paid to write aren't going to help you if you refuse to participate in their profit model.

If you want something to exist either finance it or make it. Don't whine that other people aren't building it for free. I'm thankful the API even exists, it'd be easy for them to keep their walled garden totally isolated.

[tomc1985]

Yes, let's remedy the problem by throwing in another solution in an already crowded marketplace. Burning thousands of hours grinding away at something that most likely won't take.

Hollywood has thousands if not millions of people literally "writing their own script". 99% of them won't get anywhere with it, wasting time and years of their life on a fruitless endeavor. Those are shit odds, and I don't see why society in general would be any different.

Don't let survivor bias cloud your judgement.

Much better to simply rip profits off the scalps of this contemptible society and revel in its few pleasures with a tribe of likeminded discontents. We can all watch the world burn together, and bitch about how much better life would be if regular folks didn't suck so much.

[jakear]

What are you talking about dude? I’m just saying integrate with instagrams existing api to make your own personal viewer with the contents you want. Where are you getting thousands of hours, crowded marketplaces, and Hollywood from?

It'd take a 1,000 line html file and a couple serverless functions running on some free tier (CORS...), maximum.

[tomc1985]

I don't see how some HTML and a bunch of serverless code is going to fix the problem of instagram constantly indulging me in vanity and emotionally manipulative bullshit. The only thing it will do is lock me into a cycle of maintenance and updating all the the mercy of whatever this free tier is and the API that it connects to.

And neither is building my own solution going to change anything. That is my point. You can't innovate your way out of people polluting the commons for their own selfish bullshit, because even if you do they will just pile on once it becomes big enough and ruin that too.

Also, fuck serverless. Like hell I'm going to let my stuff exist at the pleasure of some corpo that can change its mind at any time. Own your code.