<story><title>Tell HN: Instagram&apos;s API has broken, support tickets ignored, status page green</title><text>Meta offers an OAuth based API for Instagram.
Many companies and tools are built on and rely on this API for their product &amp;amp; daily operations.&lt;p&gt;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.&lt;p&gt;I find it disappointing that a leading technological company does not acknowledge a bug that&amp;#x27;s been reported to them several times more than 24 hours ago, even if to say that&amp;#x27;s it&amp;#x27;s being investigated.&lt;p&gt;The endpoint: 
https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;developers.facebook.com&amp;#x2F;docs&amp;#x2F;instagram-basic-display-api&amp;#x2F;guides&amp;#x2F;long-lived-access-tokens#get-a-long-lived-token&lt;p&gt;Currently the API returns a Bad Request with a wrong error message (the endpoint should support &amp;quot;GET&amp;quot;):
```
{
  &amp;quot;message&amp;quot;: &amp;quot;Unsupported request - method type: get&amp;quot;,
  &amp;quot;type&amp;quot;: &amp;quot;IGApiException&amp;quot;,
  &amp;quot;code&amp;quot;: 100,
  &amp;quot;fbtrace_id&amp;quot;: &amp;quot;AuDYqK74IrT9Yt2Sx51UlP6&amp;quot;
}
```&lt;p&gt;I have opened a bug report but received no response.
Facebook&amp;#x27;s status page shows all green in the API section: https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;metastatus.com&amp;#x2F;
There are several Meta Developers Community threads with no response</text></story><parent_chain><item><author>i386</author><text>this is easy to say as a comment on HN but unavoidable to a large degree for businesses in the marketing and social media space.</text></item><item><author>nkozyra</author><text>&amp;gt; Many companies and tools are built on and rely on this API for their product &amp;amp; daily operations.&lt;p&gt;Hopefully not their entire product. The first rule is don&amp;#x27;t build your company on the back of another, but I think the most important part is that if you &lt;i&gt;do&lt;/i&gt; use another company, make sure you&amp;#x27;re fine if they disappear one day.&lt;p&gt;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.&lt;p&gt;My company did too but we always kept ourselves in a place where if it vanished we&amp;#x27;d be - at worst - inconvenienced.&lt;p&gt;This approach came because early on I was burned by Twitter changes that were more impactful.&lt;p&gt;Most recent Twitter changes prove that even paying for access provides no guarantees.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>dylan604</author><text>you play in the mud, you&amp;#x27;re going to get dirty. if your entire marketing company focuses on social, then why that doesn&amp;#x27;t fall into &amp;quot;all eggs, one basket&amp;quot; concept is beyond me. Sure, it&amp;#x27;s much easier to get a company rolling when you have to do nothing but use the product of someone else as the core of your business, but why that&amp;#x27;s not an immediate red flag to someone in that position is something i just don&amp;#x27;t understand.</text></comment>
<story><title>Tell HN: Instagram&apos;s API has broken, support tickets ignored, status page green</title><text>Meta offers an OAuth based API for Instagram.
Many companies and tools are built on and rely on this API for their product &amp;amp; daily operations.&lt;p&gt;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.&lt;p&gt;I find it disappointing that a leading technological company does not acknowledge a bug that&amp;#x27;s been reported to them several times more than 24 hours ago, even if to say that&amp;#x27;s it&amp;#x27;s being investigated.&lt;p&gt;The endpoint: 
https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;developers.facebook.com&amp;#x2F;docs&amp;#x2F;instagram-basic-display-api&amp;#x2F;guides&amp;#x2F;long-lived-access-tokens#get-a-long-lived-token&lt;p&gt;Currently the API returns a Bad Request with a wrong error message (the endpoint should support &amp;quot;GET&amp;quot;):
```
{
  &amp;quot;message&amp;quot;: &amp;quot;Unsupported request - method type: get&amp;quot;,
  &amp;quot;type&amp;quot;: &amp;quot;IGApiException&amp;quot;,
  &amp;quot;code&amp;quot;: 100,
  &amp;quot;fbtrace_id&amp;quot;: &amp;quot;AuDYqK74IrT9Yt2Sx51UlP6&amp;quot;
}
```&lt;p&gt;I have opened a bug report but received no response.
Facebook&amp;#x27;s status page shows all green in the API section: https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;metastatus.com&amp;#x2F;
There are several Meta Developers Community threads with no response</text></story><parent_chain><item><author>i386</author><text>this is easy to say as a comment on HN but unavoidable to a large degree for businesses in the marketing and social media space.</text></item><item><author>nkozyra</author><text>&amp;gt; Many companies and tools are built on and rely on this API for their product &amp;amp; daily operations.&lt;p&gt;Hopefully not their entire product. The first rule is don&amp;#x27;t build your company on the back of another, but I think the most important part is that if you &lt;i&gt;do&lt;/i&gt; use another company, make sure you&amp;#x27;re fine if they disappear one day.&lt;p&gt;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.&lt;p&gt;My company did too but we always kept ourselves in a place where if it vanished we&amp;#x27;d be - at worst - inconvenienced.&lt;p&gt;This approach came because early on I was burned by Twitter changes that were more impactful.&lt;p&gt;Most recent Twitter changes prove that even paying for access provides no guarantees.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Waterluvian</author><text>Yeah, 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.”</text></comment>