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Comment by bemmu | Hacker News Reader

How does it post on Instagram though, thought the API does not include posting?

Interested in posting for Candy Japan as well, it’s tedious to post even though I already have the pics and descriptions for other use.

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You'll find python libraries on GitHub, search for "InstaPy" for example. They work by reverse engineering the internal API used in apps.

You'll get rate limited and then banned pretty quickly with these in my experience. Having a real phone and using the strategies you see in clickfarms with emulated input is the best way.

It's fairly easy especially if there is a legacy mobile app for the site. In Instagram's case you just use an older version of the app which works for legacy devices and reverse engineer it. Most the mobile apps have their own API which they connect to, so you just pretend to be the mobile app and you have access to all the features. It also doesn't change much because mostly they can't risk breaking old installs with a high install count. Use a new IP address for each account you manage. Limit the number of actions and randomize it so 30 follows day 1, followed by 2 follows, maybe 10 posts, followed by 3 posts so it's not 3 posts per day every day.

My main issue I've had is a lot of the IPs (like 1 in every 15 or so) I went through were already banned from IG or suspicious enough to block me from posting.

you mean using an actual phone or something like genymotion?

You can post to Instagram from a desktop browser if you set per-site user agent to fake as mobile browser. Then you can use screen automation such as Selenium to integrate with the headless browser.

Everything's is an API, if you scrape enough.

if you have biz account this api should work https://developers.facebook.com/docs/instagram-api/guides/co... ?

"The Content Publishing API is in closed beta with Facebook Marketing Partners and Instagram Partners only. We are not accepting new applicants at this time."

It should include it now. Buffer and Hootsuite both allow scheduling content via Instagram. I imagine they are using the API

Use Planoly. You can preschedule content and will post it on your behalf.

it probably does not use the api but rather just emulates a browser. The latter has much fore functionality but harder to code obviously.

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