If you haven’t heard that Instagram is a scam dominated by automated software ("bots"), fake users and fake "likes" you must be pretty new to the internet. But just in case you aren’t up to speed, here are a few good links that explain the depths to which the Instagram universe has sunk:
- You can’t win if you don’t cheat
- Two years of bot use on Instagram
- Inside the Instagram mafia
- Instagram’s monster
- Buy Instagram ‘Likes’ from a vending machine (yes, really)
- Cracked.com has an article on what it’s like to work in a ‘Click Farm’ that supplies fake "Likes" and "Follows"
Mind you, it’s not just Instagram that’s been ruined by the techniques described above, they’re simply the most prominent example. But the overall trend doesn’t bode well for any artist hoping to get recognized for their work.
So as an experiment I’ve started up an Instagram account of my own. As explained in the "bio", I won’t be Liking or Following anyone who Likes or Follows my account: I’ll only look at Instagram feeds that are recommended by friends or those that I find myself. If photography social media is to have any value and any hope of surviving the bot onslaught this seems to be the only sensible way for any ethical artist to proceed. (As a side note, if you sign up for an Instagram account you’ll discover the maximum allowable length for your "bio" is 150 characters. Not 150 words, 150 characters. You couldn’t ask for a clearer indication of the contempt in which Instagram holds its users.)
Serious photographers will want to post images shot with their DSLR or mirrorless cameras and Instagram doesn’t go out of its way to tell you how to do it. Fortunately, it is possible and fairly easy to do. You just have to fake your web browser’s user-agent, thereby tricking Instagram into thinking your computer is a phone or tablet. This tutorial on Petapixel explains how.
My recommendation is to use the Opera web browser, which makes it even easier than described in the Petapixel article.
Click on the Menu tab and go to Developer > Developer Tools (or use the Ctrl + Shift + I shortcut) as shown at right.
Next, click on the "Mobile Device" icon and then click on the drop-down list of phones and tablets as shown below.
You’ll need to refresh the browser window before you can click on the camera icon to upload your photo.
The only downside appears to be that I haven’t found a way to post the Location for the image through a web browser (where it says "Oxford, Oxfordshire" in the screen-grab shot above), even using the fake user-agent technique. That’s a small inconvenience: I just log on with my tablet and add the information there.
I’ll be posting an image a day for the first month or so and monitoring what kind of results I see. I’ll post updates here.
