Instagram links

June 27, 2020 9:18 AM

If you are not signed in to the Facebook empire, Instagram will not show you any content. You can get a little (photo posts, abbreviated profile) if you are signed in to facebook but not Instagram, but if you have opted out of the whole ecosystem you get a login screen on instagram no matter what. This is my experience. Easily reproduced by using a private browsing window. I argue that walled off content not available on the open web should not be FPP material.
posted by seanmpuckett to Etiquette/Policy at 9:18 AM (74 comments total)

Disagree. Neither FB nor IG is some obscure service. The majority of users likely have access to one if not both.
posted by NotMyselfRightNow at 9:32 AM on June 27, 2020

Direct links to individual photos work fine, but links to an account as a whole will quickly hit the nagwall - opening photos as new windows works for a bit. My preference is to look for alternate sources without annoying limitations, and failing that, link directly from MeFi to the photos you really like.

The majority of users likely have access to one if not both.
And those of us with Facebook/IG accounts can already get that content on those platforms. I'd prefer to see links to the open web on MeFi.
posted by zamboni at 9:39 AM on June 27, 2020 [22 favorites]

Direct links do not work if you are not signed in to either Facebook or Instagram. I click those "direct links to individual photos" and am told to log in to instagram. I do not see any content.
posted by seanmpuckett at 9:49 AM on June 27, 2020 [7 favorites]

I do not see any content. Do you understand?
Huh. I'm not logged in either, and direct links work fine for me. I wonder what the difference is?

I'm not the enemy here. Let's talk it out.
posted by zamboni at 9:51 AM on June 27, 2020 [6 favorites]

The direct links in zamboni's comment worked fine for me in a private browsing window, i.e. with no FB or Instagram login.
posted by matthewr at 9:52 AM on June 27, 2020 [2 favorites]

Yeah maybe it has to do with cookies. I am an Instagram user but if I am logged out of Instagram I can still see those links/images just fine.
posted by jessamyn (retired) at 9:54 AM on June 27, 2020 [1 favorite]

Just as a data point, I'm not on either service and the direct links to individual images show up okay for me. Trying to go from the account view to an individual image is when I get the "you must sign up" screen.
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 9:57 AM on June 27, 2020 [1 favorite]

I know I am not going mad. Both my phone (Safari and DuckDuckGo browser), and my desktop (with both Safari and Chrome) will not show me Instagram content.
posted by seanmpuckett at 9:58 AM on June 27, 2020 [3 favorites]

For diagnostic purposes:
Does this also happen in Incognito/Private mode? Do you have a FB account?
posted by zamboni at 10:01 AM on June 27, 2020

I sympathize but disagree. The web is nebulous and the boundaries between websites and apps are blurry and likely to become blurrier. Many things are available in some countries and not others, and paywalls come and go. Users posting FPPs cannot be expected to know which websites are "not open," particularly since they are obviously only posting things they are able to access themselves. A blanket ban on linking to websites as ubiquitous as Instagram would just make MetaFilter even more old-fashioned and newby-unfriendly than it already is.
posted by oulipian at 10:02 AM on June 27, 2020 [26 favorites]

I've been having trouble with Instagram no longer embedding in Slack & the like, I think this recent court case is the source of that particular change in technical policy. (I don't know if this has changed how logged-out linking goes, but as a datapoint)

Reporting my experience, the above links work just fine in Incognito mode, Chrome (Desktop & mobile).
posted by CrystalDave at 10:04 AM on June 27, 2020

Yes, private mode or not, I do not see content.
posted by seanmpuckett at 10:07 AM on June 27, 2020 [3 favorites]

Direct links to images work for me on mobile Safari. I have both an instagram and Facebook account but am not signed into either in the browser.

I do have the Instagram app on my phone.
posted by nat at 10:07 AM on June 27, 2020

I do not have any of the Facebook ecosystem apps on my devices.
posted by seanmpuckett at 10:10 AM on June 27, 2020 [1 favorite]

Are .onion links fine for FPPs?
posted by Going To Maine at 10:11 AM on June 27, 2020 [2 favorites]

I don't have an account on either service. I can view direct links and get the nag/wall when scrolling down on individual accounts, as mentioned above.

seanmpuckett, do you use a script blocker? I do have to allow scripts from instagram.com (but not the facebook domains) to view images.

That said, I would be in favor of general awareness about trying to link to other options, at least when available. Sites that are part of Facebook, sites that make it impossible to view content without trusting their javascript, companies that do active harm - I'd be glad to help reduce their footprint, even if only marginally.
posted by trig at 10:12 AM on June 27, 2020 [4 favorites]

I'm curious who gets the Not Now dismiss option that dozo mentioned in the original post.
posted by zamboni at 10:17 AM on June 27, 2020

I think as long as the posts are clearly marked as being instagram or facebook links it's fine, just so threads aren't immediately derailed by a discussion of the platform instead of the content.
posted by everybody had matching towels at 10:21 AM on June 27, 2020 [8 favorites]

I'm curious who gets the Not Now dismiss option that dozo mentioned in the original post.

The only "Not Now" I could find was by visiting an IG link logged out, on mobile, and in browser (Chrome) rather than app. There's a banner saying "Instagram is better on the app" which can be dismissed with a Not Now link. The banner doesn't stop you viewing content.
posted by matthewr at 10:24 AM on June 27, 2020

I am on neither, I have no FBverse apps, and I see the Not Now panel when I look at an Instagram pic.
posted by Etrigan at 10:34 AM on June 27, 2020 [1 favorite]

It’s the same with Twitter for many people, but it was decided Twitter links were still allowed.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 10:42 AM on June 27, 2020

What I think is the last discussion on MeTa re: birdsite seems similar to this one - weird bugginess for some folks, and a lot of works fine for me, rather than an impenetrable account-wall for everyone.
posted by zamboni at 10:52 AM on June 27, 2020 [1 favorite]

My experience is the same as seanmpuckett's. I have neither FB nor IG account.
posted by Greg_Ace at 11:33 AM on June 27, 2020

I should add that this started just a couple of weeks ago; before that I was able to see IG content.
posted by Greg_Ace at 11:34 AM on June 27, 2020 [1 favorite]

My experience is the same as seanmpuckett's. I have neither FB nor IG account.

Mostly ditto. I have FB but not IG and frequently can't see links. I just ignore it but it is a pain.
posted by RolandOfEld at 11:56 AM on June 27, 2020 [3 favorites]

Has Metafilter ever disallowed linking to stuff not everyone can see? I remember a number of these kinds of requests over the years (the one that really annoys me is paywalled NYT content, which is posted a lot), and the response has never resulted in a ban on links that I know of.
posted by tiny frying pan at 12:02 PM on June 27, 2020 [2 favorites]

I wish we didn't use any of the services for FPPs. A lot of the time, the information in the post is too thin and not interesting enough to me to feel like a proper FPP-- that is, the content is a one-liner, or a piece of breaking news, or requires too much background knowledge to understand (which someone usually comes through with as a comment later, but if your post requires someone else to jump in with the contextual information to make it work, then your post is not very good for a generalist blog.)

I also feel that user posts to FB, IG, or Twitter don't "count" as the web experience, that is, they are part of an ephemeral stream of shifting sand that doesn't present a final thought. That's OK, that's our real lives, but I would rather interact with and discuss a writeup of a trend than have to sift for meaning in an instance of the trend.

I think this is an editorial choice that I just don't agree with. I can live with it, but since we're asking, I'm against paywalled or walled-garden content as the main idea in an FPP.
posted by blnkfrnk at 12:02 PM on June 27, 2020 [15 favorites]

Has Metafilter ever disallowed linking to stuff not everyone can see?

Yes, the FAQ says:

Can I post a link to something behind a free registration?
Generally speaking, no. Things that you link to should be freely available on the web. This generally means no registration, even if there is a handy workaround using bugmenot. This goes for double for links behind reasonably prevalent pay walls (Chronicle of Higher Education, JSTOR content, etc); try to make sure your link is available for everyone before you put it on MetaFilter.

posted by matthewr at 12:11 PM on June 27, 2020 [6 favorites]

Weird. That is not my experience here.
posted by tiny frying pan at 12:16 PM on June 27, 2020 [1 favorite]

That FAQ was written when things tended to be either behind paywalls or free-with-registration-walls. Since then the technology had changed, there are issues with things like geofencing and a lot of places giving certain numbers of free articles (with no registration). There have also been many past discussions in MeTa with a lot of people discussing workarounds. I wrote that FAQ entry in 2007 and it could stand to be updated.
posted by jessamyn (retired) at 12:29 PM on June 27, 2020 [13 favorites]

We were talking about the related limited number of page load paywalls here a couple weeks ago.

Including such links are defacto allowed and have been for essentially ever in select cases. Such cases being either wide penetration of the metafilter user base with accounts (facebook/Instagram) or a free tier (NYT/Washington Post).

It's a really hard thing to police even for motivated individuals. American stuff is constantly linked that isn't available to Canadians. But of course people who can see it can't see the fence. I used to rail about it when it was commonly The Daily Show but the whole internet has gone this way. Fences and walls as far as the eye can see.
posted by Mitheral at 12:41 PM on June 27, 2020 [2 favorites]

Interesting, I didn't realise the FAQ was out of date.

Personally I have no problem with Instagram links.
posted by matthewr at 12:48 PM on June 27, 2020

Instagram has gone so far out of its way to break the web that giving them less traffic seems like a great idea. I'm not in favor of banning such links or making an official policy against posting them. But, I've learned not to bother trying to click on them. The platform isn't merely broken; it's hostile.
posted by eotvos at 12:58 PM on June 27, 2020 [15 favorites]

I see this as an instance of "well I won't participate in this post bc I cannot or will not login, get an account, allow cookies, etc for this post". Not a big deal. I move on to the next post. Maybe I am looking at it wrong, but I never assumed I am entitled to participate in every post or read every link.

My issue is being able to know where the link is going. NYT etc.

I do think that site participation is down partly bc of the way websites are setup. Not sure how to fix it. Rather than the web being more unified over time, it is more stratified.
posted by AugustWest at 1:34 PM on June 27, 2020 [14 favorites]

I don't have an account with Instagram and have never logged into Facebook on this device (or any other device for at least 5 years), and I can see the direct link content. I'm in Chrome on ChromeOS. Clearly Instagram has some sort of code that acts as an access filter for some people and not others in a way that probably has a logic to it from their perspective but is capricious from ours.

I don't think an FPP consisting solely of links to closed platforms that require a login to access the content should be acceptable. I'd prefer not to see them in FPPs at all but unfortunately it seems that's just not practical on the 2020 Web. I would prefer people to spend some time searching for sources that are freely available on the topic when putting together an FPP so that everyone can participate in the discussion, even if they ultimately include access-controlled links as well.

The issue of making it easier for people clicking a link to know what site they're going to be accessing has been coming up repeatedly for years now. As many others have requested before, I hope people will consider clearly labeling the target of links in FPPs, as in "Direct links (Instagram) to individual photos (Instagram)" to make it easier for other Mefites to decide whether to click. This is especially true for sites that may have free article count limits, but also helps communicate the potential quality of a source of information for informative links or possible issues with capricious access control as in this case. I don't think this needs to be a hard and fast rule, and there are plenty of cases where it clearly doesn't matter because the site is committed to open web technologies and access and/or just for fun, but if you're linking to The New York Times, The Washington Post, Twitter, or apparently Instagram, this seems like a simple courtesy.
posted by biogeo at 1:38 PM on June 27, 2020 [4 favorites]

seanmpuckett, are you using a VPN? instagram won't let me in if mine is turned on.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 2:36 PM on June 27, 2020 [1 favorite]

That's interesting. I've been using a VPN all along, without issue until recently. I don't care enough about seeing IG content to be willing to turn it off and test, though.
posted by Greg_Ace at 2:58 PM on June 27, 2020 [1 favorite]

Yeah, I think it's a recent change.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 3:06 PM on June 27, 2020

If a thing angers you, consider it not to exist.
posted by lucidium at 3:33 PM on June 27, 2020 [4 favorites]

If you don't want to use FB/IG then fine, but don't act like there is absolutely nothing of value to be found on those platforms. As long as there are cool people doing cool stuff there then we shouldn't make a blanket rule against SL IG/FB posts, maybe you tag it as such so that people know and don't waste 5 valuable seconds of their lives on a login screen.
posted by dudemanlives at 4:28 PM on June 27, 2020 [14 favorites]

That's a good point, stoneweaver. I hadn't thought of that before.
posted by meaty shoe puppet at 7:35 PM on June 27, 2020 [2 favorites]

firefox/private mode with vpn - could not see greenbelt images (got join/login page with no "not now" option).
firefox/private mode w/o vpn - could see greenbelt images.

i had forgotten i'd turned vpn off... so, thanks for reminding me to turn it back on.
posted by 20 year lurk at 8:21 PM on June 27, 2020

On Firefox, facebook containers messes with instagram, fyi.
posted by gryftir at 8:38 PM on June 27, 2020 [1 favorite]

On an iPad, both the single-pic and account links work, although the account links pop up a login after a bit of scrolling (no FB or IG accts on this network).
posted by aramaic at 9:40 PM on June 27, 2020

stoneweaver: If you only want to read and look at stuff that has been produced by people with money and privilege, that's your prerogative.

I don't. But I also don't want to give my data to shitty companies from the US.
In an even slightly better world, I would never need to make this choice.
posted by Too-Ticky at 1:08 AM on June 28, 2020 [10 favorites]

I don’t have a Facebook or Twitter account and sometimes have trouble accessing sources, but I’m in favor of allowing FPPs based on that content (and other semi-limited content sources) as long as the source is labeled. Seems like most people are pretty good about that.
posted by sallybrown at 4:48 AM on June 28, 2020 [1 favorite]

I argue that walled off content not available on the open web should not be FPP material.

Strongly disagree, because setting such rigid rules will wind up backfiring and make sharing links much harder.

Take it on a case by case, or service by service basis, please. Instagram and FB are necessary evils at this point and it's easy to sign up for them.

Now Quora? No, fuck them, because skeezy as fuck with walling off their content.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 6:22 AM on June 28, 2020 [2 favorites]

Brandon Blatcher: Instagram and FB are necessary evils at this point and it's easy to sign up for them.

I don't think that anyone who refrains from signing up for IG and FB does so because they're so hard to sign up for. Personally I don't even know how hard or easy it is; I've never checked, and that's not the point.
As for necessary evils: we all differ, our needs and circumstances differ, and some of us can afford to do without these companies.
posted by Too-Ticky at 6:51 AM on June 28, 2020 [8 favorites]

If you only want to read and look at stuff that has been produced by people with money and privilege, that's your prerogative

This is a gross straw man.
posted by Going To Maine at 7:52 AM on June 28, 2020 [11 favorites]

I don't think it's a straw man - in order to expand its userbase IG necessarily emphasized accessibility and ease-of-use. Regardless of evil corporate goals, it also democratizes who is able to make and produce web content irrespective of background.

Also I think it is likely that this is also a generational topic - open web and anti corporatism is sort of baked into old guard metafilter that may not persist into newer users
posted by Think_Long at 8:19 AM on June 28, 2020 [8 favorites]

I don't think it's a straw man - in order to expand its userbase IG necessarily emphasized accessibility and ease-of-use. Regardless of evil corporate goals, it also democratizes who is able to make and produce web content irrespective of background.

Noting where a bunch of content by POC folks (and non-POC folks) is accruing is not a straw man. Implying that someone does not use those platforms because they “only want to read and look at stuff produced by people with money and privilege” is. It adds an emotional valence to the question that reads as a kind of blackmail, because it is (correctly) self evident in this community that such an desire is bad. “Be an active consumer of instagram or be bad” is a straw man.
posted by Going To Maine at 9:12 AM on June 28, 2020 [4 favorites]

It adds an emotional valence to the question that reads as a kind of blackmail, because it is (correctly) self evident in this community that such an desire is bad.

It’s not “blackmail” to make a comment that makes someone realize they might have been relying on white privilege, not even if it makes the white user feel guilty, not even if it makes the white user feel worried that other users will think they are racist. Anti-racism isn’t a game where people are trying to score points against each other. The emotional valence was already in the discussion whether or not you saw it.
posted by sallybrown at 9:20 AM on June 28, 2020 [12 favorites]

I also have neither a facebook or instagram account. I have the Insta-Guest plugin in my firefox, and it makes instagram slightly less broken.

Instagram recently (a month or two?) got worse for non-logged-in users, breaking when you click on anything at all, instead of just breaking when you scroll down a bit, which was the previous breakage.

I don't have strong feelings about whether these links should be allowed here, but I do strongly feel that it's wrong to say to folks who have chosen not to be on facebook that they should just get over it and sign up already. We've all heard about facebook, we know all about it, we know we could sign up at any time, and we have all chosen yes or no for our own reasons in our own situations.
posted by fritley at 9:58 AM on June 28, 2020 [4 favorites]

I’m sympathetic to the original request. I don’t have an Instagram and I resent having a facebook account. But an official policy might be hard to implement, and it would certainly be discouraging for some users.

That said, what if, instead of a permaban, we self-imposed a hiatus on posts to FB/IG? Specifically, to coincide with the July ad boycotts? Basically saying we won’t be a source of traffic for them, and that we stand with everyone who’s boycotting. That could then serve as a convenient pilot to see how the site works without FB/IG FPPs. If we find that there’s a lot missing, we can go back to allowing them on August 1.
posted by kevinbelt at 12:51 PM on June 28, 2020 [4 favorites]

A lot of BIPOC content is *only* being produced on Instagram or Facebook. It has a low barrier to entry and a built in way to generate an audience. It requires no money to maintain. If you only want to read and look at stuff that has been produced by people with money and privilege, that's your prerogative.

And there is a lot of BIPOC content that is not on Facebook or Instagram. Avoiding FB/IG does not mean a person is “only” interested in reading stuff that has been produced by people with money and privilege. Personally, speaking as a queer poc, I try to avoid those services because Zuckerberg is using them to get Trump re-elected. However, I think it’s fine to post FB/IG links as long as they’re marked so people can see the source and decide for themselves if they want to click.
posted by betweenthebars at 1:19 PM on June 28, 2020 [18 favorites]

Do people even post IG or FB links a lot? I haven’t noticed it. If it was overwhelming other content, maybe it would be an issue. The fact that it is essentially impossible to know if another user can access a link makes it seem sillier to me to have a hard rule about it.
posted by snofoam at 1:42 PM on June 28, 2020 [2 favorites]

To quickly revisit the post that kicked this particular MeTa off, I was happy to hear that sugar and confetti liked the page I found more than the IG version.
posted by zamboni at 2:18 PM on June 28, 2020

I'm experiencing something pretty similar to what's being reported. I do browse it in Private Mode, I have a Facebook account but I use FB Container, and uBlock Origin.

To be specific:

I can load up someone's main IG page. If I click directly on a picture, I get the sign-up pop-up.
I can get around this by right-clicking and opening up each image in a new tab. There doesn't seem to be an upper limit of how many times I can do this.

However, what I can't do is scroll down on someone's main IG page beyond the first 12-15 rows. If I try, I get the pop up again and it won't go way, I have to close and reopen that page.

On Firefox, facebook containers messes with instagram, fyi.

You say "messes with", I say "does what it says on the tin".
posted by The Pluto Gangsta at 2:30 PM on June 28, 2020 [3 favorites]

I also suspect cookies. Many, many websites install a FB tracking cookie when you visit them, whether you have a FB account or click on any FB content of the site or not. You might not be aware of this if you don't actively prevent such cookie installation using uMatrix or the like.
posted by Kirth Gerson at 3:05 PM on June 28, 2020 [2 favorites]

Using a VPN, plus I am signed into FB but using it inside Firefox with container on and I cannot see IG posts in regular or private mode. This also started in the last few weeks for me. I use Firefox on another computer that isn't signed into FB (thus has no container installed either) and I can usually see single IG posts there. I am in favor of noting the location of a link when it goes to either of FB or IG.
posted by soelo at 6:42 AM on June 29, 2020 [1 favorite]

Instagram has gone so far out of its way to break the web that giving them less traffic seems like a great idea.

I don't think Instagram thinks of itself as part of the web. They're an app that incidentally has a web presence, not a website that has an app. For a long time, you couldn't post to IG from the web at all and I'm not certain if you can now.

Which may mean that it's questionable whether IG posts belong on a community weblog, but there are a lot of artists who use IG as their primary website, so I wouldn't support a blanket ban. I will be more conscientious about trying to find alternate links to works by particular artists, though, rather than relying only on Insta when I post.
posted by jacquilynne at 7:56 AM on June 29, 2020 [4 favorites]

You can post to IG from a mobile browser but not, it is to be noted, a desktop browser. They have done the calculation that they'd rather have content added to their site than not from people who won't run their app, but they push hard on the "it's better in the app!" dark patterns. (This "generosity" doesn't extend to browsing the site on mobile without a login. They'll happily hoover up your photos to make money from them, but won't share them with anyone they don't have a Facebook "social graph" for.)
posted by seanmpuckett at 8:49 AM on June 29, 2020

You can post from a desktop browser, but it takes some work. This is how I interact with IG.
posted by jessamyn (retired) at 9:31 AM on June 29, 2020

This whole issue of marking where content comes from keeps coming up again and again and again and again and again. How hard would it be to have links auto-read and compared to say, a list of the top 100 websites and have [NYT], [FB], [IG] or whatever auto-appended? Computationally, this seems like a trivial amount of effort compared to having this discussion AGAIN. (Srsly, this is like the third or fourth time this year.)
But yeah, also put me down as a big YES vote on 'deplatform facebook altogether.'
posted by sexyrobot at 9:34 PM on June 29, 2020 [8 favorites]

Displaying the destination of a URL is something that many web browsers can already do, on most mobile devices a long press will reveal the destination along with a preview picture. I don't think this is something Metafilter should be trying to replicate. Giving special treatment to the top 100 websites also seems problematic.

If there are certain website domains you don't want to visit, adding them to a HOSTS file blocklist can be helpful - it will load a blank page instantly instead of a paywall with lots of cruft and tracking cookies.
posted by Lanark at 10:50 AM on July 1, 2020

Maybe it might be easier to include a list of sites which tend to be problematic for a certain proportion of users in the posting guidelines, and ask the poster to include that information in the text of the post? I mean, sure, some posters might fail to do that, but they could edit the post later if someone points it out to them.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 10:54 AM on July 1, 2020

Facebook played an absolutely pivotal role in the election of Donald Trump, and they knew exactly what they were doing, too — and they were fully prepared to do it again if they could get away with it, but that's turning out to be a little more difficult than they expected, so we'll see.

You can choose to believe hosting PoC content on Instagram somehow makes up for that and I won't argue with you, but don't expect me to agree.
posted by jamjam at 12:27 PM on July 1, 2020

Displaying the destination of a URL is something that many web browsers can already do, on most mobile devices a long press will reveal the destination along with a preview picture

Yes, but doing that preview: A) counts against your mobile data if you're not on an unlimited plan, B) gives clicks to somewhere you might not want to give clicks to, which is the point of trying to see the URL before you decide whether to go to it or not.

If there are certain website domains you don't want to visit, adding them to a HOSTS file blocklist can be helpful

Not possible on an unjailbroken iPhone or iPad.

Mobile devices are a key reason why I've been supporting the idea of showing the domain in plain text immediately after most/every link. Desktop browsers usually let you preview URLs quite easily, and it's significantly easier to block undesirable URLs or at least not click on them on the client end in that situation, but the ways to do that on a mobile browser are a lot more compromising.
posted by Pandora Kouti at 9:17 PM on July 1, 2020 [4 favorites]

Not possible on an unjailbroken iPhone or iPad.

You can easily block specific websites in iOS Safari, using the Content & Privacy Restrictions settings.
posted by oulipian at 9:30 AM on July 2, 2020

oulipian, yes, but I don't want a *hard* block. Like, for example, I often *want* to load a YouTube video on my phone when I'm at home on WiFi! But I don't want to load a video site when I'm running on data, or even if I'm on a public WiFi network without headphones. Having the URL domain display in plain text would be a useful and sufficient cue for me to make a contextually-relevant decision to click or not.
posted by Pandora Kouti at 2:25 AM on July 3, 2020 [3 favorites]

For Youtube specifically, if you turn on the youtube & vimeo inline option in your profile, that appearance of the little video clicky button will clue you into the fact that it's a video link.

That's not to take away from the larger point that link pressing to see the destination is actually pretty annoying on mobile and there's lots of reasons why people might want to know where they are going before they go there.
posted by jacquilynne at 8:51 AM on July 3, 2020 [1 favorite]

I just came here to say I have the same experience but think it’s a mobile thing. If someone posts a twitter link and I click directly on it, it takes me to the login screen for twitter. But if I open the link in a new tab, I can see it. I wonder if it’s the same for IG.
posted by corb at 2:15 PM on July 4, 2020

N'th-ing that Instagram is mostly unusable for me. It used to be "sometimes randomly broken" and for the last month (?) has been "basically unusable and randomly sometimes works." I don't mind since I can skip those posts once I find they're Instagram links; I like most of the content posted here so I wish that folks would try to source non-Instagram links where possible. I know that's often not possible or practical.
posted by introp at 10:55 AM on July 6, 2020

Lanark: If there are certain website domains you don't want to visit, adding them to a HOSTS file blocklist can be helpful - it will load a blank page instantly instead of a paywall with lots of cruft and tracking cookies.

If you're on a "standard" computer (not a smart phone, tablet, or other mobile device) and this is news to you, How To Geek has information on how to edit your HOSTS file for Windows, Mac and Linux,
posted by filthy light thief at 1:11 PM on July 6, 2020