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Instagram actively fights to shut down this kind of access. Any solution you find that works now will soon be killed.

I’ve given up. The result is that I simply don’t get to see what my friends and family post there anymore.

This is where I am at too. I've told my friends that if they want me to see what they post they need to use something that isn't so actively user-hostile. Even Facebook will at least email me when selected friends post something.

That being said I'm not sure if there is a great website to recommend for private sharing. Mastodon is maybe the best but I'm not sure I am a huge fan of the "only short messages" medium.

Some instances have larger character limits. It's not configurable, but it's fairly easy to patch.

Does this affect federation? Or does Mastodon accept larger posts anyways for federating with non-Mastodon ActivityPub services?

Mastodon accepts whatever content it receives. The character limit is only for posts created from that instance.

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