Meta, aided by Apple and Google takes down an ad-free Instagram clone | Hacker News Reader

Meta, aided by Apple and Google takes down an ad-free Instagram clone

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34 pointselashri27 comments

I think the title here is misleading. if they had moved to take down an ad-free instagram clone, that would be anti-competitive and possibly illegal. taking down an ad-free instagram client is still unpleasant, but probably [IANAL] not illegal and somewhat justifiable.

as it is, and as is made clear deeper into the article, they took down a client

This is a bad article and does the entire story a disservice. This wasn't a clone it was a reverse engineered client which is against Instagrams ToS. You may not like it but Apple and Google were absolutely correct to take this down. The more salacious part of the story is Facebook going after the teams personal accounts. I don't believe they have any basis for that. Unfortunately that part of the story is constricted to a small blurb in the second to last section.

> it was a reverse engineered client which is against Instagrams ToS

...and perfectly legal in many parts of the world.

That is completely irrelevant.

The title says clone. The article says client. Those are very different things.

Looks to me like a patched client a la vanced: https://www.theogapp.com/

It is a clone of the client, so both.

Instagram is a platform. It’s not a clone of that just like Tweetbot is not a clone of Twitter.

Yes, a client is not necessarily a clone. But this one is, that's the point

Seems like it's clearly a client, but Meta calls it a "clone site":

https://about.fb.com/news/2022/07/how-meta-safeguards-people...

I wonder if this will haunt Google and Apple as proof of their monopoly power.

One of the monopoly tests is whether or not it harms competition. This clearly did.

It wasn't competition, it was more or less piracy. The app store monopoly is bad but this isn't an example of its misuse.

It seems like they were just a client for Instagram which was stripping out the ads, which would probably be a pretty clear cut violation of Instagram ToS or whatever API they were using, so I'm not surprised Google/Apple would remove it from their stores

Google and Apple aren't, or shouldn't be, the ToS enforcers for Meta.

It's a ToS violation, not a legal one.

They are however copyright enforcers and have detailed copyright infringement policies

It is unclear whether a third-party client that accesses content you are otherwise licensed to access is actually infringing, and it's likely to differ in many countries as well.

This is not copyright infringement. The users logging in have the ability and license to view the material.

The copyright law in many countries contains a specific interoperability exception that explicitly allows such cases to enable "information exchange".

"Courts have recognised that reverse-engineering is important for public benefit and to encourage inventors and businesses thereby maintaining healthy competition in the market".[0]

[0] https://lexinsight.wordpress.com/2020/06/08/achieving-intero...

Yet most technology giants are based in the States thus do what they want - within the permissive laws of their country. It's ironic how the folks here on one side get upset every time Google/Meta does something evil, yet at the same time get upset when the EU does something against Google/Meta.

I hope they will release an apk and a website

The modern internet sucks. I remember using Pidgin (née GAIM) in the early 2000s to access multiple chat accounts/protocols in one clean interface. Third party apps like this are very rare now.

I mean … what do you expect when the client uses the Instagram API directly and filters out the monetization part of it?

And also routes pic traffic via 1 IP address making it super easy to block…

Quote:

    “This app uses Instagram’s private API without permission, it won’t last long on the app stores,” Paluzzi predicted.

Shouldn't be news, the same would happen with literally any ad-based app.

Misleading title, it is not a clone, but a client for the actual Instagram.

As others noted, Meta is misleading here calling an alternative client a "clone", and the site accepts this naming, but HN shouldn't.

Banned on stores, but why not post APKs & IPAs so advanced users can continue using it?

Instead they make one join the waitlist.

It’s honestly insane to invest that much time and effort into an app so dependent on a 3rd party API.

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