I spent all weekend creating a custom automation script (Using webdriver). I had actually done this once before over a year ago, and there seemed to be NO rate limits. I was going crazy and all was well.
I decided to record a video tutorial on writing an instagram bot from scratch this weekend, and it was hell.
I've had three different accounts action-blocked. Within minutes. These are three different accounts I use regularly, they have posts, some followers, and I've only automated them through a few days stretch over a year ago. So they should be 'warm' and in good standing.
Amazingly, I'm getting rate-limited by number of VIEWS!! I had a list of 200 profiles to navigate to, get their follower/following ratio and store them in a file. Well after about ~20 profiles the pages stopped loading. When I stopped the the script and navigated to the page manually it would say something like "Please try again in a few minutes". LIking posts led to me getting a good old action block after liking 5 ~ 10 posts. Same with follows.
Here are some of the steps I took to try to fool Instagram:
Mobile emulation: I am starting the Chrome browser as an iPhone X with a small viewport.
Network throttling: I am throttling my network to make it seem like it's 3G (might not be working)
Scrolling: I scroll around the page before scrolling to the button I want to click, and the scroll amounts are randomized.
Timing: All actions are timed randomly between 5 - 60 seconds, this means I'm only liking /following several to a dozen users per hour. When I follow someone the browser waits between 1 ~ 2 minutes before proceeding.
No login: The browser loads with a user profile that is already logged into Instagram.
Still getting blocked.
After reading the posts on here and Jarvee's struggles, it seems clear to me that Instagram has DRAMATICALLY hobbled the power of the web instagram client. If you try to do ANY mass actions on instagram through the web client you will get blocked. They only accept a large number of actions through the mobile app now it seems.
I tried using my laptop home wifi network, and using USA proxies via Tunnelbear. It doesn't seem to be my ip that's getting blocked, because I log into another account and I'm good. They just block whatever account is acting suspicious. I'm going to try a few more things to really confirm this. And then if that still doesn't work, I will have to use Appium to automate the actual mobile app.
Any success stories from people using their own custom scripts?
I decided to record a video tutorial on writing an instagram bot from scratch this weekend, and it was hell.
I've had three different accounts action-blocked. Within minutes. These are three different accounts I use regularly, they have posts, some followers, and I've only automated them through a few days stretch over a year ago. So they should be 'warm' and in good standing.
Amazingly, I'm getting rate-limited by number of VIEWS!! I had a list of 200 profiles to navigate to, get their follower/following ratio and store them in a file. Well after about ~20 profiles the pages stopped loading. When I stopped the the script and navigated to the page manually it would say something like "Please try again in a few minutes". LIking posts led to me getting a good old action block after liking 5 ~ 10 posts. Same with follows.
Here are some of the steps I took to try to fool Instagram:
Mobile emulation: I am starting the Chrome browser as an iPhone X with a small viewport.
Network throttling: I am throttling my network to make it seem like it's 3G (might not be working)
Scrolling: I scroll around the page before scrolling to the button I want to click, and the scroll amounts are randomized.
Timing: All actions are timed randomly between 5 - 60 seconds, this means I'm only liking /following several to a dozen users per hour. When I follow someone the browser waits between 1 ~ 2 minutes before proceeding.
No login: The browser loads with a user profile that is already logged into Instagram.
Still getting blocked.
After reading the posts on here and Jarvee's struggles, it seems clear to me that Instagram has DRAMATICALLY hobbled the power of the web instagram client. If you try to do ANY mass actions on instagram through the web client you will get blocked. They only accept a large number of actions through the mobile app now it seems.
I tried using my laptop home wifi network, and using USA proxies via Tunnelbear. It doesn't seem to be my ip that's getting blocked, because I log into another account and I'm good. They just block whatever account is acting suspicious. I'm going to try a few more things to really confirm this. And then if that still doesn't work, I will have to use Appium to automate the actual mobile app.
Any success stories from people using their own custom scripts?
