Instabot V1.0 Stable Release: Auto-like, Auto-follow

Meet the Bot.

Instagram's great for sharing what you are up to without having the need to show your pals in facebook what you have been really up to. For me, I use instagram to improve my photography skills, learn more about my camera, a Sony A5000 mirrorless camera and force myself to go out, explore and meet people. Orrr...simply stalk what other people everywhere else are drinking in the eccentric world of craft beer. 

I have now reached a point where I feel that I have built a solid portfolio of some crafty brews and I want them to be seen. I don't just want them to sit there and do nothing. I want them to make other people go out and drink good craft beer. But in order for them to do that, I need to be reach out to communities that have similar interests to mine so that I can learn a thing or two from them and vice-versa. 

I did take the ethical route of clicking on hashtags, liking pictures, commenting on some genuinely sexy beer bottles and even following people whom I thought were worth my time. I really did. Unfortunately, the whole process of clicking with your thumb felt archaic as it was 1) slow and 2) extremely time consuming. I just don't have the time for that. I had to find a better way.

I had to automatize the whole process. 

The internet did have some clues and answers on how I should approach that. And since I am not really big into coding, I had to dig a bit deep to understand what was written and debug and test. Thankfully, with the bit of C language I knew, I was able to modify, improve and even expand on some of the JavaScript code I that I found. So here's the code after undergoing some extensive 24/7 automatic running with tangible results.

CAUTION: It's important to note that instagram's algorithm can detect and ban instagrammers who abuse the system. I have placed the delay time between each like and follow to be approximately 2 minutes which has worked great for me. I did get temporary ban a couple of times during test runs, however, I was able to fix the bug and runs under their bot detection radar.

DEMO:

THE TIME SAVING INSTAGRAM BOT

V1.0 Release Features

1) Automatically likes and follows

2) Intelligent enough to understand whether someone has already been followed

3) User can manually change time and number of likes. For my account, I put the bot to work every plus-minus two minutes

4) Shows time of like and follow

5) Shows number of like

6) Tested on Raspberry Pi

Pre-requisites

1) Instagram account

2) Search a #Hashtag

3) Click on a picture

4) Run the code on Browser's Java Console (written in JavaScript)

Known Issues

1) Unlikes if already liked

I have documented how to use the code [HERE]
The actual code can be found on my github repository [HERE]