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.
Why?
Edit: also see the relevant discourse in this other thread (especially that comment here): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32686866
I've always viewed this argument as a very poor one. This essentially mandates that all very successful online enterprises become government arms. When does Instragram/Twitter/Facebook, once made a "public platform", become free of these new responsibilities? Is Twitter free to shut down tomorrow once they have public fiduciary responsibilities?
I'm all in favor of additional regulation to encourage/reward/enforce "openness", especially with respect to data originating from users (photos, ...). But saying these companies have any responsibility to the social good is pure foolishness.
It doesn't. You can always split up before you grow too large, and remain private.
There's precedent: once you're a monopoly, you have extra responsibilities to the social good, like splitting up or getting regulated.
In some smaller communities, it is also has a monopoly on social media in general and instant messaging.
This is even more problematic, because such platforms have a positive feedback loop of user acquisition. Many users have no option but to use them, because all their contacts are using them.
In any case Instagram is certainly not in a monopolistic position at the moment unless you try to twist the sense of words to fit a narrative.
Also: we are talking about Instagram, not about Pornhub — I guess the nature of the service would certainly play a role in that argument (e.g. think about messengers).
What I do think myself is that beyond a certain size platforms should have it harder, should be held to higher standards, should fulfill more requirements etc. Because naturally bigger platforms will have it easier than their smaller competitors and it is in our interest to balance this out. Whether APIs are part of this, I don't know. Haven't given it much thought.
Basically, if we ever want to get the Internet back into the users hand, we need to decouple the "service" and the "storage" parts. Companies shouldn't be allowed to hold user data hostage.
The more able I am to interact with an interface programmatically, the more easily I can exploit it and turn it into a giant database.
People don't use Bibliogram (or other alternatives) to access unauthorized data (all it displays is the same data visible on the web or via the app), it's to be able to browse without being stalked by Facebook and avoid their dark patterns.
This is more or less how the Cambridge Analytica fiasco started. And yes, this was seen as a privacy problem.
This is a diverse Forum and people have various opinions.
To be honest I think they would have. I just don’t think they’ve fully thought through the consequences. Worse, maybe they have thought about the consequences, but are ok with being outraged at both ends of things. Lots of people get mad and try and skirt any security/password protection measure, but also get just as mad when they inevitably get hacked because they’ve skirted all the security measures. But even after that still won’t use the security measures because of the “inconvenience”.
Private accounts (where you have to approve followers manually) exist and as far as I know nobody is calling for making those public. A hypothetical API would still require the credentials of an approved account before returning data of such accounts.
> But it’s not all that hard to exploit this by creating a popular page that lots of people end up sharing some data with
I don't understand what this has to do with an API? You can create a phishing page now.
> This is more or less how the Cambridge Analytica fiasco started. And yes, this was seen as a privacy problem.
Cambridge Analytica created a malicious website that requested access to people's accounts and they granted it. Not only is it on idiots that approved the OAuth consent form, but it doesn't seem like it's got anything to do with what the parent comment was proposing? As far as I know all he was calling for is to provide an API that returns the public data that you can already get via the official web UI or app.