Since many people can't access the post anyhow, the short version of 'why' is: instagram keeps trying to block bibliogram (we can't have nice things), the author is tired of working around it, the author is also tired of fighting on a second front against the bots that try to scrape bibliogram. The bots also try hard to circumvent blocks that the author needed to put in place, rather than spending the time learning how to run their own instance and going to town on that.<p>Of course, it's open source so it's not like it's "discontinued" in the same sense as if gmail were to be announced to be discontinued. The official server will even remain online, just with current limitations (like viewing profiles being blocked by facebook) not being fixed for the foreseeable future.
Looks like there's a referrer filter for HN. Copy URL and open in a new tab, I guess?<p>My personal Bibliogram instance has been blocked for months. With Instagram blocked as part of my wider PiHole block on Facebook's domain and public Bibliogram instances shutting down soon, I guess I'm going to just ignore Instagram links from now on.
This should be an extra push for some to get onto <a href="https://pixelfed.org/" rel="nofollow">https://pixelfed.org/</a>.
I'm glad that Bibliogram exists, but it really shouldn't have to exist. Instagram/Meta should be legally required to provide an open API.
lol, OP completely missed out on the biggest IG ratelimit bypass. You could just use IPv6 and make literally millions of requests per second from a single server with a /48. (Oh! And before that you could just spoof X-Forwarded-For)<p>I printed money using this to automatically take good usernames as they became available.
Anti-scraping technology is absolutely ridiculous. Modern example: TikTok. Have you <i>seen</i> webmsssdk.js?<p>They simply don't want users to be able to access their own data and use it elsewhere in the internet that they can't see, control, and sell.<p>This is exaggerated by services that login to your accounts to scrape your data for you being illegal under the CFAA.<p>What a shame for the web.
Reminder to anyone who might want to peruse or fork the source in the future: Sources still available at <a href="https://sr.ht/~cadence/bibliogram/sources" rel="nofollow">https://sr.ht/~cadence/bibliogram/sources</a> but as with anything may become unavailable at any point.
Referrer filter, so I right clicked and "open link in new tab" but still referrer filter. Don't like that the browser sends that info with that option. That should be equivalent to copy/pasting the URL.
I ran into the private profile problem with bibliogram ALL THE TIME. Even tho I was friends with them on instagram. So I just stop using it. It was broken most of the time anyways. It was a fun 3rd party unoffical API frontend that I added to my list of other ones I could self host.<p>That amount of hostility to scrapping and 3rd party clients feels like that they want to be in control of the data not you.
Thank you cadence for all the hard work and inspiration. This wasn't for nothing. I would bet on a newleaf-style reboot (with gallery-dl, to tackle onto a bigger community) if i had to. I might try my hand at it at some point but i'm afraid i'm less dedicated than you are.
I found a really awesome "public instance" vps node that had a bunch of utils & anonymous public interfaces webapps (nitter,...) running on it for all.<p>They also had a list of things they dont support, with reasons why. Meta interfacing were listed (including to bibliogram), and typically with links to fire-bot takedown requests to kingdom come. No one else has anything like this. Very very unique company.
I self-hosted this for a while but found that I got blocked/severely limited as soon as I tried to do basically anything. I'm sure there were things I could have done to get around the limitations that very quickly got imposed, but it wasn't worth it to me. If you don't like Instagram's UI/tracking/privacy policy/closedness then really the only sustainable solution is to stop using it, in any guise.<p>Bibliogram was a great project but I think Instagram is too aggressive about trying to protect its walled garden. It's a losing battle. Easier to just realise that, for most people, Instagram doesn't add that much to your life anyway.
And in completely unrelated news on the front page 'why Instagram is dying'<p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32685663" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32685663</a>
Take down some of the most egregious pages and disinformation? No, we (Facebook/Meta) will waste our time shutting down anything remotely challenging to our monstrosity we're trying to conquer the world with (see also: shutting down the NYU Ad Observatory, or any countless other examples)
<i>> Before we start: If Bibliogram has been helpful to you, please consider making a donation!</i><p>Before asking me to consider a donation, consider cutting the silly referrer based moan about the the site that referred me to yours so I have to jump through a hoop to see the content.