Instagram bans access to its API

Question

Does anybody know about the latest Instagram news: "Starting 10/1/2017, all permissions other than the basic permission will be unavailable to submit for or obtain."

What is truth to this? If we submit before, are they going to still check the submission? Do they plan to ban old approved API accesses too?

If anybody made it find a bit of info about this I would be very grateful. The news is kinda surprising and concerning with no explanation involved.

Thank you!

Answer 1

I tried to start a last minute review process for a website i was working on, after i read that instagram is about to close down access on its api. Yesterday my request was declined and now it is no longer possible to start a review process with any other permission than basic. They also updated their login permissions overview page. Any applications to permissions other than basic are no longer accepted.

This is really sad. I think Instagram is a great platform with lots of opportunities to create great services on top of it. It would be really interesting to know the strategy behind it. The graph api clearly isn't a replacement for the classic api, since it is limited to business accounts and therefore also supports only limited use cases.

Answer 2

For what it's worth (not a true answer as I can't comment): we applied in August and were rejected once. Applied again for the correct brand / advertiser use case functionalities and were approved about 2 weeks ago. We continued our development of the app, knowing that

• there is indeed a push towards the new Graph API (which severely limits data access and is only for Instagram business accounts)
• Oct 1 is a deadline for new submissions.

As of this morning (Oct 4), our permissions have been removed (not revoked or declined "marked in red" but removed altogether, without any prior warning). So we spent several thousands of $ in development to build features which are no longer useful; e.g. content discovery.

This page https://help.instagram.com/contact/1701222010148021 mentions:

Starting October 1st, only submissions for basic permissions on the existing Instagram API will be reviewed. We will not be accepting submissions for public_content, follower_list, comments, relationship, or likes permission scopes. Developers are encouraged to build on the new Instagram Graph API.

It clearly refers to new submissions & encourages migration towards the Facebook Graph based API but does not explicitly mention banning existing permissions. That seems to be incorrect.

Trying to utilize the form to appeal previously rejected permissions results in a page not found. I hope this information is of use to anyone experiencing similar issues or serves as WARNING to those investing in any features around non-basic deprecated permissions.