You can’t subscribe to Instagram users unless you have a third party website produce an RSS feed for the account you’d like to follow (Instagram doesn’t publish feeds natively). My RSS generator decided to make you pay for their service, so I’m on the lookout for a free one because I’m cheap and have zero interest in creating an Instagram account myself just so I can follow. Once in a while, I will visit the account’s URL directly to see any new posts, which is the online equivalent of starting a fire with a magnifying glass and dried grass when there’s gasoline and matches a few yards away.
But Instagram had to do a Pinterest and force a log in/sign up modal if you scroll down far enough without being authenticated, aka: lurking, one of the great Internet pastimes. Scratch that; it’s worse than Pinterest, since you can’t either dismiss the modal nor scroll in case you maybe wanted catch a glimpse of the photos behind the translucent modal shadow.
As a demonstration, so you don’t have to experience the unnecessary level of rage, here’s a screenshot of a rather average fellow’s account, upupdowndown (by the way, there are no websites or anything that will generate a random Instagram user for you; I found that one by typing in garbage after the “https://instagram.com/” trailing slash).
Gaze into the abyss.
Just another reason to avoid it altogether.
5 Comments
I’ve been off the gram for about a year now. I do some lurking too, and you’re right, it’s very passive aggressive. Doesn’t let you see stories and I don’t think it allows you to see followers/following either. Heck, sometimes even comments are blocked.
What are stories?
Nevermind; I looked them up. See? I had no idea they existed because it’s behind the auth wall. Oh well.
Ugh. I hate that tactic on sites likely to have something interesting at random times, but not worth actually getting an account. I’m learning about blocking specific JScript items because of that. It’s hit and miss, but I’m starting to get the hang of it. Modals typically show up in blocking software, though names vary highly.
Yeah, if you can use the browser’s developer toolbar, you can work around it, but it can sometimes be too much effort to be worth it. That’s the good thing about using the front-end as a barrier, as opposed to throttling the user to another page.