{"id":16771,"date":"2019-12-12T10:14:22","date_gmt":"2019-12-12T18:14:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/?p=16771"},"modified":"2019-12-12T14:28:42","modified_gmt":"2019-12-12T22:28:42","slug":"continuing-my-instagram-lurker-status","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/2019\/12\/12\/continuing-my-instagram-lurker-status\/","title":{"rendered":"Continuing my Instagram Lurker Status"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class='__iawmlf-post-loop-links' style='display:none;' data-iawmlf-post-links='[{&quot;id&quot;:2177,&quot;href&quot;:&quot;https:\\\/\\\/www.instagram.com\\\/p\\\/BsD1IdUFsbS&quot;,&quot;archived_href&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;redirect_href&quot;:&quot;https:\\\/\\\/www.instagram.com\\\/accounts\\\/login\\\/?next=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.instagram.com%2Fp%2FBsD1IdUFsbS&amp;is_from_rle&quot;,&quot;checks&quot;:[],&quot;broken&quot;:false,&quot;last_checked&quot;:null,&quot;process&quot;:&quot;done&quot;},{&quot;id&quot;:2178,&quot;href&quot;:&quot;http:\\\/\\\/anildash.com\\\/2019\\\/12\\\/10\\\/link-in-bio-is-how-they-tried-to-kill-the-web&quot;,&quot;archived_href&quot;:&quot;https:\\\/\\\/web-wp.archive.org\\\/web\\\/20260302111932\\\/https:\\\/\\\/www.anildash.com\\\/2019\\\/12\\\/10\\\/link-in-bio-is-how-they-tried-to-kill-the-web\\\/&quot;,&quot;redirect_href&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;checks&quot;:[{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-03-04 02:45:13&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:206},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-03-30 13:37:51&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:206},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-04-08 05:23:31&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:206}],&quot;broken&quot;:false,&quot;last_checked&quot;:{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-04-08 05:23:31&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:206},&quot;process&quot;:&quot;done&quot;},{&quot;id&quot;:2179,&quot;href&quot;:&quot;http:\\\/\\\/instagram.com\\\/norwescon&quot;,&quot;archived_href&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;redirect_href&quot;:&quot;https:\\\/\\\/instagram.com\\\/norwescon&quot;,&quot;checks&quot;:[],&quot;broken&quot;:false,&quot;last_checked&quot;:null,&quot;process&quot;:&quot;done&quot;},{&quot;id&quot;:2180,&quot;href&quot;:&quot;https:\\\/\\\/daringfireball.net\\\/linked\\\/2019\\\/12\\\/12\\\/link-in-bio&quot;,&quot;archived_href&quot;:&quot;https:\\\/\\\/web-wp.archive.org\\\/web\\\/20260208081045\\\/https:\\\/\\\/daringfireball.net\\\/linked\\\/2019\\\/12\\\/12\\\/link-in-bio&quot;,&quot;redirect_href&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;checks&quot;:[{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-03-04 02:45:21&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:206},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-03-30 13:37:53&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:206}],&quot;broken&quot;:false,&quot;last_checked&quot;:{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-03-30 13:37:53&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:206},&quot;process&quot;:&quot;done&quot;},{&quot;id&quot;:2181,&quot;href&quot;:&quot;https:\\\/\\\/www.instagram.com\\\/download\\\/request&quot;,&quot;archived_href&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;redirect_href&quot;:&quot;https:\\\/\\\/www.instagram.com\\\/accounts\\\/login\\\/?next=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.instagram.com%2Fdownload%2Frequest%3F__coig_login%3D1&quot;,&quot;checks&quot;:[],&quot;broken&quot;:false,&quot;last_checked&quot;:null,&quot;process&quot;:&quot;done&quot;}]'><\/div>\n<p>Last year, I decided to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/p\/BsD1IdUFsbS\/\">stop posting to Instagram<\/a> as part of my ongoing (and some days more successful than others) goal of posting more to spaces that I control (specifically, this blog) instead of constantly pumping content into closed systems.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve never entirely stopped <em>using<\/em> Instagram, though \u2014\u00a0I still check in fairly regularly to see what my friends there are posting \u2014\u00a0and over the past few weeks, as we&#8217;ve been getting closer to the new year, I&#8217;ve been toying with the idea of going back to posting there. There are ways to automatically cross-post between Instagram and this blog, so I figured that it might be worth uploading there again, as long as I cross-posted here, and participating again instead of just lurking.<\/p>\n<p>However, a couple things over the past few days have me leaning back towards sticking with my lurker status. The first was Anil Dash&#8217;s post <a href=\"http:\/\/anildash.com\/2019\/12\/10\/link-in-bio-is-how-they-tried-to-kill-the-web\/\">\u201cLink In Bio\u201d is a slow knife<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\n  Links on the web are incredibly powerful. There are decades of theory behind the role of hyperlinks in hypertext \u2014\u00a0did you know in most early versions, links were originally designed to be two-way? \u00a0You&#8217;d be able to see every page on the web that links to this one. But even in the very simple form that we&#8217;ve ended up with on the World Wide Web for the last 30 years, links are incredibly powerful, opening up valuable connections between unexpected things.<\/p>\n<p>  For a closed system, those kinds of open connections are deeply dangerous. If anyone on Instagram can just link to any old store on the web, how can Instagram \u2014 meaning Facebook, Instagram\u2019s increasingly-overbearing owner \u2014 tightly control commerce on its platform? If Instagram users could post links willy-nilly, they might even be able to connect directly to their users, getting their email addresses or finding other ways to communicate with them. Links represent a threat to closed systems.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Instagram&#8217;s lack of support for URLs in captions has been a hassle to deal with (admittedly, less so for my personal account, and more so when I was managing <a href=\"http:\/\/instagram.com\/norwescon\">Norwescon&#8217;s account<\/a>, but still a hassle), I just hadn&#8217;t put as much thought into it as Anil does in his post. As John Gruber summarizes it, &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/daringfireball.net\/linked\/2019\/12\/12\/link-in-bio\">&#8216;link in bio&#8217; is fucking bullshit<\/a>&#8220;.<\/p>\n<p>The other thing was trying to update <a href=\"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/2018\/12\/12\/12660\/\">a post from a year ago<\/a> that had been mirrored from Instagram, but at some point the image had broken. In trying to find a new link for the <code>src<\/code> argument in the <code>img<\/code> tag, I first found that there was no easy way to just grab the image (not in itself a bad thing, as it&#8217;s likely at least in part an anti-image-theft measure), so I figured I could just grab Instagram&#8217;s &#8217;embed&#8217; code and find the image link in there. However, their embed code is obfuscated in some way so that there isn&#8217;t a simple image link anywhere in there that I could find, and it ends up being a <em>huge<\/em> mess of code (check under the cut at the end of the post to get a sense of how much garbage code Instagram wants us to use when displaying an image elsewhere).<\/p>\n<p>In the end, I just used Safari&#8217;s developer mode to extract the image and manually uploaded it to WordPress to add it to the post. I&#8217;ve also <a href=\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/download\/request\/\">downloaded all my Instagram data<\/a> so that I have a local archive I can use as a source for manually correcting any other now-broken Instagram cross-posts that I find in the future.<\/p>\n<p>So the end result is that no, I won&#8217;t resume uploading to Instagram after all. But, for now, I&#8217;ll keep my account around so I can keep peeking at my friends&#8217; lives, at least.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>Here&#8217;s the code block that Instagram provides when you chose the &#8220;embed&#8221; option \u2014\u00a0and this is with the &#8220;Include caption&#8221; option turned off.<\/p>\n<pre><code>&lt;blockquote class=\"instagram-media\" data-instgrm-permalink=\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/p\/BsD1IdUFsbS\/?utm_source=ig_embed&amp;amp;utm_campaign=loading\" data-instgrm-version=\"12\" style=\" background:#FFF; border:0; border-radius:3px; box-shadow:0 0 1px 0 rgba(0,0,0,0.5),0 1px 10px 0 rgba(0,0,0,0.15); margin: 1px; max-width:540px; min-width:326px; padding:0; width:99.375%; width:-webkit-calc(100% - 2px); width:calc(100% - 2px);\"&gt;&lt;div style=\"padding:16px;\"&gt; &lt;a href=\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/p\/BsD1IdUFsbS\/?utm_source=ig_embed&amp;amp;utm_campaign=loading\" style=\" background:#FFFFFF; line-height:0; padding:0 0; text-align:center; 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&lt;div style=\" color:#3897f0; font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; font-style:normal; font-weight:550; line-height:18px;\"&gt; View this post on Instagram&lt;\/div&gt;&lt;\/div&gt;&lt;div style=\"padding: 12.5% 0;\"&gt;&lt;\/div&gt; &lt;div style=\"display: flex; flex-direction: row; margin-bottom: 14px; align-items: center;\"&gt;&lt;div&gt; &lt;div style=\"background-color: #F4F4F4; border-radius: 50%; height: 12.5px; width: 12.5px; transform: translateX(0px) translateY(7px);\"&gt;&lt;\/div&gt; &lt;div style=\"background-color: #F4F4F4; height: 12.5px; transform: rotate(-45deg) translateX(3px) translateY(1px); width: 12.5px; flex-grow: 0; margin-right: 14px; margin-left: 2px;\"&gt;&lt;\/div&gt; &lt;div style=\"background-color: #F4F4F4; border-radius: 50%; height: 12.5px; width: 12.5px; transform: translateX(9px) translateY(-18px);\"&gt;&lt;\/div&gt;&lt;\/div&gt;&lt;div style=\"margin-left: 8px;\"&gt; &lt;div style=\" background-color: #F4F4F4; border-radius: 50%; flex-grow: 0; height: 20px; width: 20px;\"&gt;&lt;\/div&gt; &lt;div style=\" width: 0; height: 0; border-top: 2px solid transparent; border-left: 6px solid #f4f4f4; border-bottom: 2px solid transparent; transform: translateX(16px) translateY(-4px) rotate(30deg)\"&gt;&lt;\/div&gt;&lt;\/div&gt;&lt;div style=\"margin-left: auto;\"&gt; &lt;div style=\" width: 0px; border-top: 8px solid #F4F4F4; border-right: 8px solid transparent; transform: translateY(16px);\"&gt;&lt;\/div&gt; &lt;div style=\" background-color: #F4F4F4; flex-grow: 0; height: 12px; width: 16px; transform: translateY(-4px);\"&gt;&lt;\/div&gt; &lt;div style=\" width: 0; height: 0; border-top: 8px solid #F4F4F4; border-left: 8px solid transparent; transform: translateY(-4px) translateX(8px);\"&gt;&lt;\/div&gt;&lt;\/div&gt;&lt;\/div&gt; &lt;div style=\"display: flex; flex-direction: column; flex-grow: 1; justify-content: center; margin-bottom: 24px;\"&gt; &lt;div style=\" background-color: #F4F4F4; border-radius: 4px; flex-grow: 0; height: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px; width: 224px;\"&gt;&lt;\/div&gt; &lt;div style=\" background-color: #F4F4F4; border-radius: 4px; flex-grow: 0; height: 14px; width: 144px;\"&gt;&lt;\/div&gt;&lt;\/div&gt;&lt;\/a&gt;&lt;p style=\" color:#c9c8cd; font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; line-height:17px; margin-bottom:0; margin-top:8px; overflow:hidden; padding:8px 0 7px; text-align:center; text-overflow:ellipsis; white-space:nowrap;\"&gt;&lt;a href=\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/p\/BsD1IdUFsbS\/?utm_source=ig_embed&amp;amp;utm_campaign=loading\" style=\" color:#c9c8cd; font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; font-style:normal; font-weight:normal; line-height:17px; text-decoration:none;\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"&gt;A post shared by Michael Hanscom (@djwudi)&lt;\/a&gt; on &lt;time style=\" font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; line-height:17px;\" datetime=\"2018-12-31T17:19:35+00:00\"&gt;Dec 31, 2018 at 9:19am PST&lt;\/time&gt;&lt;\/p&gt;&lt;\/div&gt;&lt;\/blockquote&gt; &lt;script async src=\"\/\/www.instagram.com\/embed.js\"&gt;&lt;\/script&gt;\n<\/code><\/pre>\n<p>It really shouldn&#8217;t take 7,089 characters to do what the following 123 (give or take, depending on the length of URLs and username) would do just as well (&#8220;just as well&#8221; for the end user, that is, if not for Instagram&#8217;s data collection):<\/p>\n<pre><code>&lt;img src=\"http:\/\/instagram.com\/[IMAGE URL]\" width=\"600\" height=\"600\" alt=\"[USERNAME AND MAYBE CAPTION]\" \/&gt;&lt;br \/&gt;\n&lt;a href=\"[INSTAGRAM POST LINK]\" alt=\"[USERNAME]\"&gt;A post shared by [DISPLAY NAME] ([USERNAME])&lt;\/a&gt; on [POST DATE\/TIME].\n<\/code><\/pre>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>After (almost) a year away, I toyed with resuming uploading to Instagram. But in the end, nope \u2014\u00a0I&#8217;ll lurk, but I won&#8217;t contribute.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2040,2043],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16771","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","category-personal"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16771","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16771"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16771\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16771"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16771"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16771"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}