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Anyway, I wrote a small JavaScript script that, when run on an Instagram page, it downloads the current post/reel/story in the best quality available. If it’s a carousel post (as Instagram calls it), it downloads all the items separately. It even names the files nicely using the username and the time they were posted, so when you look at a bunch of downloads, they’re automatically organized by user and date/time.
Maybe someday I’ll turn it into a Chrome extension.
But again, I use it occasionally, and most of my interaction with Instagram is human, so there is a minimal chance of being blocked/banned. In fact, I mostly use it when I want to post on this site 😏
I don’t think this is about your IP. Instagram has a really advanced system for spotting bots. If you send a lot of HTTP requests in a short time, it immediately flags it as unusual—basically, not human behavior—and marks your activity as potentially bot-like.
At first, they just slow you down by rate-limiting your requests, so things get really slow and some requests start returning 403 (Forbidden) or 429 (Too Many Requests). Your program then has to retry, sometimes waiting a few seconds or even minutes between requests.
If you keep pushing, Instagram can temporarily block your account. Unblocking might require a phone number, and in some cases, even a selfie. Keep going past that, and they might ban your account for good, which means you’d have to start over with a new one. Changing your IP won’t help because they know it’s you based on your account login.
Their system is smart enough to look at your account history too. A brand-new account looks like it’s just for scraping, while an older account with normal human activity might get treated more leniently—though if you continue bot-like behavior, it will still eventually get banned.
The trick to staying under their radar is just not being too aggressive: download slowly, wait between requests, and try to mimic human behavior instead of pure bot behavior. I guess that’s why 4K Stogram gave up—it’s frustrating because Instagram keeps finding new ways to detect suspicious activity.