Self-hosting my Instagram profile

After more than 5 years using Instagram, I decided it's time to move out. This "turning" point for me, is when I start loosing control and influence over the platform I'm using. This happens in a multitude of ways: Loosing control of what we consume/see (a) by means of a completely algorithmic feed, being served a multitude of ads (b), and being pushed to consume, rather then share (c).

So I created /photos

Bulk downloading them was quite straightforward. Using Python and Instaloader, I was able to retrieve all of my +300 posts from Instagram, including albums. Since I'm using Pelican for this static blog, I had to create a "page" for every one of these photos. Which is, albeit, a bit of a hack. But hey, Python is great to automate this type of thing.

The actual photos are now stored in a (probably insecure) S3 bucket, which I sync to a local folder. To keep things fast, I have both Cloudfront (for the photos) and Cloudflare (for the actual blog) sitting on top of them. I'm also using Pillow to generate thumbnails in .webp format, just to ensure the /photos page loads relatively fast.

Uploading is by no means as simple as opening an app and snapping a picture. But I've created a small python script that processes a photo, generates a thumbnail, asks some questions about it, and uploads it to S3 and my blog. And that's good enough.

For those wondering, I still have my Instagram profile up, which now just serves to redirect people back to my website via a landing page. Instagram blocked my url a long time ago - reasons unknown.

Vittoria suggested I should also email my close friends and family automatically when I upload a photo, I think that's a great idea - but probably a story for another day.