6 ms·
Tell HN: Instagram's API has broken, support tickets ignored, status page green
Meta offers an OAuth based API for Instagram.
Many companies and tools are built on and rely on this API for their product & daily operations.
Beginning Friday evening (US time), a critical endpoint in this API has broken. The endpoint creates long-lived access tokens, so it is in the critical path for almost any company using the API.
I find it disappointing that a leading technological company does not acknowledge a bug that's been reported to them several times more than 24 hours ago, even if to say that's it's being investigated.
The endpoint:
https://developers.facebook.com/docs/instagram-basic-display-api/guides/long-lived-access-tokens#get-a-long-lived-token
Currently the API returns a Bad Request with a wrong error message (the endpoint should support "GET"):
```
{
"message": "Unsupported request - method type: get",
"type": "IGApiException",
"code": 100,
"fbtrace_id": "AuDYqK74IrT9Yt2Sx51UlP6"
}
```
I have opened a bug report but received no response.
Facebook's status page shows all green in the API section: https://metastatus.com/
There are several Meta Developers Community threads with no response
- luxuryballs 4y agoThe FBI must have warned them about some upcoming Russian propaganda /s
- xkcd1963 4y agoThey created a complete mess. One would think such a high prestige employer would employ competent managers and software developers, but that does clearly not translate to what they produce. Lots of words, little deeds. And then they decide to lay off people and it apparently makes it only worse.
- hislaziness 4y agoImpact of the layoffs?
- gregjor 4y agoGood news, like shutting off a leaky sewer pipe.
- unxdfa 4y agoThat’s the best description I’ve heard for instagram.
- adhesive_wombat 4y agoNot really, since it implies the "leak" is unintentional.
- greatjack613 4y agoDid you double check that other people are having this issue? Seems very likely that this could be something affecting just your access key or something like that
- tdy721 4y agoThis one, a single report does not an outage make.
- i386 4y agoIt seems to be affecting a lot of people using Instagram Display API but not the Instagram Graph API. Loads of reports. https://developers.facebook.com/support/bugs/743806503999661 https://developers.facebook.com/support/bugs/743806503999661
- reddec 4y agoDid you try POST (regardless of docs)?
- Traubenfuchs 4y agoIt‘s calming to see that even big tech is unable to properly manage their APIs including completely useless error massages and communication silence.
- never_inline 4y agoDiseconomies of scale.
- mangotab 4y ago[dead]
- Arbortheus 4y agoGET for creating access tokens seems like the incorrect request type.
- dbalatero 4y agoOddly their docs use GET though https://developers.facebook.com/docs/instagram-basic-display-api/guides/long-lived-access-tokens#get-a-long-lived-token https://developers.facebook.com/docs/instagram-basic-display...
- i386 4y agoWelcome to Meta API
- contravariant 4y agoUsing GET to request a resource, kind of makes sense. Usually you want to send some information to the endpoint as well though, which makes a GET a bit awkward.
- jeroenhd 4y agoGET should be idempotent, so if the request is repeated by the browser/a proxy/a user hitting F5, it should not matter. This is why some websites with inadequate password reset email links don't work if your company/ISP/email provider implements link scanning, as the automated service already clicked the super secret one-time link (and if the website is following the spec, that should be totally fine). As long as the GET requests returns the same or equivalent API data every time they make total sense. For an access token, that's perfectly fine, assuming they don't generate a new token with every request of course.
- moneywoes 4y agoIs it only your product?
- i386 4y agoMy startup is a consumer of the Graph API for Instagram (OP appears to be using Dispay API). We have about 1000 loc that just deal with weird user specific bugs in their API and it’s impossible to give feedback about it to anyone at Meta. OP - is there a way to contact you? Drop me a DM on ig Instagram.com/i386 I may be able to help with a workaround
- egberts1 4y agoMeta (Facebook/Instagram) must have not taken the Twitter route during their mass layoffs. You cut non-essential folks firstly and critical operational personnel lastly.
- paxys 4y agoYou are right the Twitter API is so usable right now..
- blululu 4y agoThey probably tried to do that but without a complete understanding of who does what exactly. Imagine a clueless manager lists out who on their team does what. Imagine the clueless manager got canned and now someone one or two steps removed needs to assess who does what. You don’t get to a layoff by being a well managed org, so you typically don’t execute the layoff very well.
- femiagbabiaka 4y agoTwitter didn’t take that route either.
- cldellow 4y agoI gather you haven't tried to use the Twitter Ads API lately. :) This is literally an API that makes it easier for people to give money to Twitter. And yet it's seemingly abandoned since the Musk takeover, with the old documentation taken down and the support forums ignored.
- egberts1 4y agoIs it still in Elon Musk's business model, perhaps that's what he wanted.
- kleinsch 4y agoNice snark, but layoffs in Nov were primarily business, most recent round doesn’t actually start in tech until April.
- pacifika 4y ago[flagged]
- meghan_rain 4y agoWell, did you try a POST?
- barbazoo 4y agoNot sure if they fixed it yet but starting a month or so ago FB disabled creating test users which broke our release process in one corner of the org. Same thing you mentioned, lots of bug reports, no response other than boilerplate 1st level support. I don't mind it though, long term that's good news as it'll let us remove any dependencies we have on FB.
- 360macky 4y agoOh that's awful. I'm developing my first app with Instagram Display API.
- jeroenhd 4y agoI don't know what you've already checked, but the lowercase `get` in the error message seems suspicious. Are you sure you're sending a `GET` and not a `get`? HTTP verbs are case sensitive, after all.
- benguild 4y agoInstagram’s API tokens constantly expire for me regardless of whether they’re supposed to be “long-lived” or not. They last like 90 days which is super annoying.
- i386 4y agoYou need to keep using the tokens for them to remain valid. Have a daily job that fetches the users basic profile info like /accounts/me to keep them valid
- mrloop 4y agoI'm building an integration that will use a long lived token once a month. In your experience will a long lived token expiry if not used for a month? How long do they remain valid until expiring from not being used?
- i386 4y agoAbout three months for long lived tokens in my experience. My recommendation would be to use them weekly.
- VWWHFSfQ 4y ago> Many companies and tools are built on and rely on this API for their product & daily operations. Will you people ever learn.
- nkozyra 4y ago> Many companies and tools are built on and rely on this API for their product & daily operations. Hopefully not their entire product. The first rule is don't build your company on the back of another, but I think the most important part is that if you do use another company, make sure you're fine if they disappear one day. The last time Facebook made major changes (ostensibly as a response to the Cambridge Analytica stuff, but that was just an excuse) a bunch of people got burned. My company did too but we always kept ourselves in a place where if it vanished we'd be - at worst - inconvenienced. This approach came because early on I was burned by Twitter changes that were more impactful. Most recent Twitter changes prove that even paying for access provides no guarantees.
- i386 4y agothis is easy to say as a comment on HN but unavoidable to a large degree for businesses in the marketing and social media space.
- LadyCailin 4y agoPart of these types of businesses is accepting that risk then, and knowing that despite doing everything right, your business may be unceremoniously shut down because of some PM’s whim. I wouldn’t want to be in that kind of position, but I guess more power to those that do.
- nkozyra 4y agoWell these are riskier businesses to start for this reason. I did cage it by saying make sure your whole company doesn't collapse if one API gets shut down.
- Waterluvian 4y agoYeah, I don’t think it’s right to say “never try.” It’s more, “never lose sight at how brittle your business is. The other company owes you nothing if it’s not written in a contract. You aren’t a victim when it breaks your business.”
- uoaei 4y ago
- jurassic 4y agoI feel like “thing broken, status page green” has almost become a meme at this point. We need to do better here.
- 0xfacfac 4y agolol Did Elon acquire Instagram too?
- turnsout 4y agoI really hope more users discover Pixelfed. As a developer, it was so easy to work with (99% people of the time just treat it like the Mastodon API).
- zimpenfish 4y agoI'm hoping that someone makes a Pixelfed-alike with a sane stack like Elixir or Go. The installation guide is just a bit too long and faffy for me right now.
- turnsout 4y agoIf enough people show up, that will happen, just like it has with Mastodon
- s1k3s 4y agoI mean, Meta's developer terms literally say you agree they can take your product at any time and turn it in their own product without prior notification. And that's on top of "we can change anything, we can cut out your access at any time" etc. So yeah, do you really expect anything from these companies? Don't make your product rely on them.
- mjdowney 4y agoThere is nothing more frustrating than a status page that lies about the state of an API. Feels like insult + injury. I'd rather they not even have a status page!
- xwdv 4y agoUnfortunately almost all status pages are for gaslighting purposes when things get really bad. Easier to tell a developer they’re crazy and their code was wrong than to admit to downtime and violate any SLAs.
- reustle 4y agoThere have been various attempts to create status pages that aren’t controlled by the companies they are watching. Not sure which are the most popular now.
- Graphguy 4y agoStatus page seems updated now.
- Animats 4y agoYour problems mean nothing to us, puny startups!
- the_gipsy 4y agoOoh, did someone get addicted to crack? mocks tears Don't build on platforms, build on protocols.
- twodave 4y agoStatus pages aren’t for providing transparency or customer service or anything else besides enforcing contracts.
- fsckboy 4y agoI'll try to give different advice from what I see here: if you build your company on Istagram's API, make sure the network effects of your product encourage use of Instagram and that use benefits its owners; then they won't want your access to go away.
- helsinkiandrew 4y agoSaw this a few months ago (strangely it seems ok for us at the moment) With no response or acceptance there was a problem from FB it started working 2 weeks later. If your users are professional/business you should be using the graph API - this is much better supported/tested. To me the display/basic API feels like something that isn’t that integral to FB and could be dropped at any time.