Examining the Challenges in Archiving Instagram

To prevent the spread of disinformation on Instagram, we need to study the accounts and content of disinformation actors. However, due to their malicious nature, Instagram often bans accounts that are responsible for spreading disinformation, making these accounts inaccessible from the live web. The only way we can study the content of banned accounts is through public web archives such as the Internet Archive. However, there are many issues present with archiving Instagram pages. Specifically, we focused on the issue that many Wayback Machine Instagram mementos redirect to the Instagram login page. In this study, we determined that mementos of Instagram account pages on the Wayback Machine began redirecting to the Instagram login page in August 2019. We also found that Instagram mementos on Archive.today, Arquivo.pt, and Perma.cc are also not well archived in terms of quantity and quality. Moreover, we were unsuccessful in all our attempts to archive Katy Perry's Instagram account page on Archive.today, Arquivo.pt, and Conifer. Although in the minority, replayable Instagram mementos exist in public archives and contain valuable data for studying disinformation on Instagram. With that in mind, we developed a Python script to web scrape Instagram mementos. As of August 2023, the Python script can scrape Wayback Machine archives of Instagram account pages between November 7, 2012 and June 8, 2018.