ubuntu-phone team mailing list archive

[sturmflut <sturmflut@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hey all,


On 07/09/2015 11:33 PM, Sina Bakhtiari wrote:
> Hi all
> I've been developing a native Instagram client (not a scope) for a while
> and for now it has some basic functionality.
> As you know Instagram has putted so much limits for their API (it also
> limits the liking and commenting functionality) and to get permission to
> use their API the developer should submit his app for review.
> 
> Now the problem is they don't accept requests for the unofficial
> clients, actually their review process is restricted to applications
> that offer business services and not consumer facing apps.
> But there are new unofficial clients released every month that have
> these abilities and it seems they somehow persuaded the Instagram to
> give them those permissions.


No, this is the same problem that we have with Twitter, WhatsApp,
Google+ etc. These unofficial clients haven't got permission from
anybody, they are based on reverse-engineering the behavior of the
official client and/or simply violate the terms of service.

I know that people really want to use these services, but every
unofficial client will always play "catch-up" with the service provider.
This puts the users at risk of suddenly not being able to use the
service until the client has been fixed to support the new protocol
version, and service providers like WhatsApp even proactively go and ban
users for using unofficial clients.

In the end you can't do much more than avoid such service providers, use
webapps if possible and bug the service providers until they go and
support your platform. Everything else will always be a second-class
solution that may stop working tomorrow.

cheers,
Simon