Instagram's API shutdown is a cold reminder to all product builders

They said they would, and they did: Instagram have shut their Instagram Basic Display API down.

It's gone, Jim

The imminent shutdown was announced in a post on September 04, giving all Basic Display API users two months to sort their lives out.

Some of the affected apps:

• Tinder and Hinge enabled users to pull their Instagram posts on their dating profiles.

• Day One, the journaling app, enabled users to pull Instagram posts into their app to save precious memories.

• Discord, the chat app, enabled users to log in using Instagram.

Although the Basic API is gone, the Business API equivalent is very much available, though it requires Instagram users have a business account.

Building products on top of an API is dangerous

In case you forgot, this is a good reminder that building an app on top of a popular application's API is a dangerous game.

Social media platforms, in particular, have been known to shut APIs down willy-nilly (although, in this case, they gave plenty of warning):

• After the takeover in 2023, Elon shut down Twitter's free API access, effectively killing all social media scheduling tools.

• In 2018, Instagram massively shrunk the number of API calls an app could make (from 5,000 to 200 per hour) without warning and little communication with devs.

• In 2018, Facebook tightened its API policies drastically after the Cambridge Analytica scandal, leaving applications stranded.

As always, when building app that strongly relies on APIs: builder beware.