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Why would you use an account to do that?

I didn’t that’s what surprised me. I think some urls are unique to your session.

Not that it should matter I don’t think I’m the one at fault here.

AFAIK you need a username to be able to extract anything from instagram at all.

You don't, I don't have an IG account but my wife occasionally sends me links to reels that I use yt-dlp to download.