I’ve been getting into automotive photography, been doing it for my own interests for years, but as of late, I’ve been wanting to grow out of it, go it a little more “pro-hobbiest” level and be able to share publicly.
I’ve tried posting on other social medias like 500px or pixelfed, but no one knows what these are, and people quickly lose interest when I don’t give them a Instagram handle or something familiar, especially as where I live everything is IG, so as it stands, the only way I share is in person, face to face and hope people are happy for me to text/email them links to a proton drive, and that goes about as smoothly as you’d imagine, so with that in mind, I’d like to try and see if there is a way I can run a IG account with privacy in mind.
I have a old LG G8s Thinq that I was considering putting another OS on and use only with either home internet or hotspot off of my main phone, use the LG only for Instagram and having all my images stripped of metadata before posting, but wondering what other tips people have in mind if they had to do this themselves. I understand that with anything Meta, true privacy is pretty much impossible, so a good enough solution is well, good enough.
Much appreciated!
Unix porn, Arch Linux installs, problems with my system, complaining about systemd for no reason, and Linux memes.
Basically c/linuxmemes and c/unixporn but on Instagram.
If you want to push your Instagram account…
Try to make it your goal to get 100 followers. That gets to access to various metrics that you otherwise wouldn’t see.
Don’t just have people following your feed, but follow others and be somewhat interactive in doing so.
When posting, try to include location data and hashtags of the event and cars in the description. Also run a reel that includes photos from your posts.
Maybe save some photos as latergrams. Post some photos the week after the event you go to. I’ve found that Meta is more likely to show my initial photos quickly, but will meter or my later photos if I’m posting all at once.
Hiding seems like a good idea. I have a Instagram account with my real name on my phone because I need it to get information way more often then I’d want to. In a matter of days multiple friends tried to follow my account, even though I never posted anything.
Also, as many people have already said, Instagram is geard towards short form video. As said, I really don’t use Instagram but if I scroll down my home feed past the accounts I follow I just get fed maybe 80% short forn video of which alot seems to be AI generated.
I guess I’d start by unblocking instagram in my hosts file lol
DAE le meta bad???
this but unironically
I have gotten more interaction with pixelfed than with Instagram.
I have more followers in 1 year on pixelfed than 4 years on Instagram.
About 60% of my followers are only fans bots and the other 30% are people I know. The last 10% are organic followers who like my photos. I don’t do short form videos so I don’t have any lasting engagement.
I have advertised my pixelfed I think twice on the fediverse. But not any more than that.
If you want to have the community, I’ve heard that flickr is probably the best. Many people use it and it’s photography focused.
Instagram is taken over by short form videos. If you’re not doing that or making really really good photos in unique areas, then you’ll max out at 2-3 hundred followers.
If you’re in an urban kinda area, have you considered going to car meets and exchanging Instagram @s ?
Might be helpful to get your insta out there by going where the people already are.Most if not all my local car meets all advertise their next meet up spot on insta either plainly or by code name. I didn’t even post car pics, but organizers here (hawaii :) will follow anyone back, especially if they post car stuff.
This is exactly the plan. I go to a lot of meets, underground and public eye, so the plan is just to exchange at these events/meets. Currently there is just knowledge of people based on common of appearance and 1 person I have exchanged numbers with, but I have multiple people asking every meet for a IG or that alike asking to see what I shoot, and this is the sole reason of asking the question. I’d love to satisfy these people, be able to give them a page, a “portfolio” they are familiar with, but also somehow still keep my privacy with the systems I use
Ohhh, I read your concern as how to grow in popularity, but… I can’t read @.@
I think Litchralee pretty much detailed what I’d do. Use a separate phone, or ig in a browser. My bf had a yolo tablet once, to show his niece how easily “popular” he can get just by posting random cat memes. We learned that if you follow too many accounts at once or get too many follows quickly, they’ll block your account until you do a facial scan, so… That was the end of that experiment, lmao.
If you find the people you meet are using bluesky, I can… with hesitancy… recommend wafrn? I only hesitate because the design intent is like tumblr, and I’m not sure if that’s your vibe. It’s activitypub and atproto compatible, so you can share your one account with both bluesky and fediverse users. You can even spin up your own wafrn instance.
For situational awareness, the alt-text requirement for photos is on by default, but you can turn that off in your wafrn account.
https://wafrn.net/
I wouldn’t, honestly.
I wish it was as easy as that, but not much in terms of an alternate when it comes to my location and the community of people I’d be doing shoots with. Very little in terms of publicly accepted social medias outside of IG, FB, Tiktok and Xitter, even reddit although is common, I still wouldn’t call it a household name here outside of major cities
not Instagram but
a) I was medium large on Twitter in its heyday (way before Musk) - 10k followers, average of 100 likes per tweet, big ones doing 100k
b) my wife’s friend (and mine) is an IG fashion lady who has 100k followers.
Generally, to make it successful, you post all day every day exactly one type of content. Easy for me as I wrote jokes and sketches, which is what I like doing - but it does become a job.
Awesome to hear! Would be kinda a nice feeling consistently getting interations on your posts, I’m not focusing on that, but can’t deny that it does sound nice. I hear that a lot that “making it” on any social media really does just became a job in itself, and I really don’t want that. Posting what I plan on would still really just be a passion project of my own and I’d like to keep it that way for as long as possible, the moment it becomes a job, it looses it’s appeal
You wont reach anyone on Instagram with pictures alone - you need to post videos.
I have a carefully curated landscape photography feed on Instagram for which I’m quite proud of. I’ve been managing that page for closer to 15 years. I get more likes on my posts on my few year old Pixelfed profile.
I still have Instagram as it’s a place I can point most people to but nobody is going to independently find me there.
Not great to hear, but I am glad you are proud of it yourself, focusing on popularity of your own posts I feel never works out, but as long as you can look back on your efforts and be happy and proud, it’s all you really need. I’m not too fused with not gaining attention on the posts alone, as you say, it’ll be a place to point people too when they ask in person as these are the crowds of people I’ll be focusing on.
For the objective of posting photos to an Instagram account while preserving as much privacy as possible, your approach of a separate machine and uploading using its web browser should be sufficient. That said, Instagram for web could also be sandboxed using a private browsing tab on your existing desktop. Certainly, avoiding an installed app – such as the mobile app – will prevent the most obtuse forms of espionage/tracking.
That said, your titular question was about how to maintain an Instagram account, not just post images. And I would say that as a social media platform, this would include engagement with other accounts and with comments. For that objective, having a separate machine is more unwieldy. But even using a private browsing tab on your existing machine is still subject to the limits that Instagram intentionally imposes on their desktop app: they save all the crucial value-add features for the mobile app, where their privacy invasion is greatest.
To use Instagram in the least obtuse manner means to play the game by their rules, which isn’t really compatible with privacy preservation. To that end, if you did want a full Instagram experience, I would suggest getting a separate, cheap mobile phone (aka a “YOLO phone”) to dedicate to this task. If IG doesn’t need a mobile number, then you won’t even need a working SIM account. Then load your intended images using USB file transfer, and use an app like Imagepipe (available on F-Droid) to strip image metadata. Turn off all location and permissions on this phone, and when not in-use, turn the phone off or in airplane mode.
My other half runs Facebook and that type of stuff. I handle most of YouTube stuff and two websites. There’re are plugins I use that allows me to email in posts to my website and any posts made are also sent to Facebook in shortened form.
I record video while scuba diving using a DJI Action 4. On the surface I use my S21 with a DJI Osmo Mobile 6 while recording audio with a cheap wireless lav mic that is usb c. To manage the social media’s i use my tablet and computer she has a Tab a9 for complete management of YouTube, email, Facebook, And whatever else she has setup.
Most of my stills are from video and only show remote underwater locations or where I am at. I do my best at home to keep views of structures to a minimum. Look up Imagepipe https://f-droid.org/packages/de.kaffeemitkoffein.imagepipe as you can use it to quickly strip tags and resize pictures.
Can you manage an Instagram account via browser or must it be done via app?
I would recommend managing it by both browser and via an app - If not on your phone, a tablet or some laptops will do (i think)
- browser makes it possible to post images of varying size (rectangular alongside square ones) alternatively you can add margins onto photos before posting them, so they’re all the same proportion.
- I can’t remember if posting on browser or on app gives better quality. Probably app is better but most people don’t want the faff of transferring photos from their camera, to their PC (for editing), to their phone (for posting).
- using the app on a portable device is the only way to post stories + reels and stories + reels are very good for promoting your page and distributing the content.
TL;DR Instagram is rigged for people with cutting edge high functioning smartphones who post Instagram reels&stories. If you only want to post images you can use the browser but your page won’t attract as many people.
This is really helpful and good knowledge to have, appreciate it! I don’t plan on reels or stories but good to know what to do if I do decide, as for now just a place to post too and to share with people face to face when they ask where they can find me online. I have had many interactions with people eager to follow me online only to then weird them out because i have no FB/IG/Tiktok/Fitter, then never hear or see them again, so it is mainly for that reason.
The web doesn’t allow you to do all the things you can do on the app.
Can new account really grow?
Yes, the odds though is what gets ya. As mentioned in other comments, gaining attention, followers, or what have you isn’t my intent, just a means for local people I meet face to face to easily find me online, see essentially a “portfolio” and reach out to me in the future if they really wish.
Not without content or SEO services and such.
And paying for ads
Probably. If you post interesting stuff regularly and often. But that would be a full time job.
I have started running an Instagram account for a niche thing that after the heat death of Twitter shifted its attention to Insta. I was one of those insufferable Facebook leavers in the mid teens and had deleted my own FB and Insta accounts. So I created a new one. But I’ve never accessed it without a VPN. To get all the functions I’m running the app on an old phone under permanent, dead man switch VPN connection. And crucially it’s a phone that never had Insta installed on it before when I was using it under my main driver account.
And I’m using it because the interaction is there. In the decade I wasn’t on Insta it has turned to shit. And it’s no longer the app to share pictures. If you want people who appreciate just good pictures, maybe try Pixelfed instead.
Pixelfed is nice, but there is very little traction there, but as my aim isn’t to gain global followers or gain any fame, I am not fussed with posting somewhere that would garner that attention, instead a more portfolio like, easily shareable and understood amongst the masses media that could also be a way for someone to reach out if they wished. I plan on posting to both and promote the pixelfed on IG in the future if I go down that route too. Separate hardware for the 1 task of posting and occasional interaction seems to be the way, I am hesitant on a VPN though as long in the past I tried making and running an account while only on a VPN, and within minutes the account got shut down due to “suspicious activity”, which required a pic of me and government ID to unlock the account, and I haven’t touched meta since, with or without VPN.
Use the same country for the VPN as you’re in. Same or neighboring state in the US. And then stay on that server. There is always a risk. I decided I would bail on the account if they ever wanted more from me. 2y in and knocking on wood.
Pixelfed is really a lean back experience so engagement will be lower. You can just go for a Mastodon account and you’ll be able to promote it on Pixelfed; they will just miss out on all text only posts for the time being.
maybe use a public wifi if you have one available nearby? or a residential proxy, tho it’a bit unethical and has the possibility of being banned.
