Instagram is shutting the door on Windows Phone – and no, it’s not because they’re making their own Windows Phone app. News has emerged that they are now blocking and deleting images uploaded to the photo sharing site by a third-party app called Instance.
Evidently Instagram has little spies that watch every @WindowsPhone user and deletes their images after uploading. #onlythingicanthinkof
— Daniel Gary (@danielgary) July 30, 2013
According to Daniel Gary, the developer of Instance, the app will let you upload the image straight onto the servers before it magically disappears. The Verge has been able to independently verify his claims, also noting that, “On one Verge staff account, a photo uploaded last week using Instance is no longer visible publicly for others to see, but is still stored under the account.”
This does pose a question: what’s going to happen to all the other third-party Instagram apps now? If Instance is finding itself blocked, then certainly other apps are now facing, or soon will hit, that roadblock. The only app that won’t hit that ban will likely be the widely-promoted (by Nokia) Oggl app by Hipstermatic – mainly because they are using the ‘official’ method of posting to the photo-sharing site (i.e. a non-hacked way).
Either way – this situation makes both sides look bad. For Instagram, and its owner Facebook, the block makes them look like massive arseholes; while for Microsoft, it adds to the narrative that not all of the popular apps are on its platform. This is despite news that Vine, Path and Flipboard all recently announcing they will soon be on the OS.
UPDATE: In a statement, Instagram said the changes were part of a security update. “We recently made an update to the systems that we use to fight spam to help prevent future attacks and increase security,” an Instagram spokesperson said. The spokesperson also said that applications accessing the API against its terms will be affected by the change, and says that it does not specifically target any platform.