Listening
Listening is three things you can read about content that is not yours: the posts that tag you, the public posts under a hashtag, and another Instagram account's public figures.
All three only read. They work in read-only mode and need no write access. Nothing they find is stored.
What you can ask
Where has our Instagram account been tagged lately?
Show me the top posts under #acmecoffee.
How is @example_roastery doing on Instagram compared with us?
Where you are tagged
Ask where your business is tagged. You can name a Facebook Page, an Instagram account, or both. You get the posts newest first, each with who posted it where Meta says, its text and its link. Instagram posts also come with their likes and comments.
Tags are not mentions
This list holds tags only: posts that tag your account or your Page. It does not hold @mentions written in a caption or a comment, and it cannot. Meta has no list of those for an app to read.
So an empty list does not mean that nobody mentioned you. Every answer says this.
Other limits come from Meta: Instagram leaves out private posts, and Facebook lists public posts only.
What it needs. The Facebook half needs nothing extra. The Instagram half needs a comment permission, which your connection has only if the administrator switched on Ask for the comment permissions when people connect on Meta app. See Comments.
Hashtag search
Ask for the public Instagram posts under one hashtag. You choose:
- the most popular posts (the default), or
- the posts of the last 24 hours.
Each post comes with its text, link, likes and comments. Meta names no author for a post found this way, and a post whose owner hides its likes has none here.
Give one hashtag at a time, with or without the #. It takes no spaces and no emoji.
Switching it on
Hashtag search is off by default. Meta answers it only for an app that has a feature named Instagram Public Content Access, which Meta grants through App Review.
Once the app has it, the administrator:
- Opens Meta app.
- Under Hashtag search, ticks Let people search Instagram hashtags.
- Presses Save.
It is a feature of the app, not a permission. Nothing is added to the sign-in, and nobody has to reconnect.
While the switch is off, a search is refused. If it is on and the app does not have the feature, Meta refuses, and the answer says that the feature is what is missing.
The budget of 30 hashtags
Meta allows an Instagram account 30 different hashtags in any 7 days. This is Meta's limit; no setting raises it.
The server counts them for you:
- Every answer says how many are used, how many are left, and which hashtags are counted.
- A hashtag that was already looked up in the last 7 days is free to search again.
- The 31st different hashtag is refused before Meta is asked, so the refusal uses nothing up. It says when the next place frees.
The budget belongs to the Instagram account, not to the person: everyone who searches as that account shares it. A lookup made for the account outside this server is not in the count.
So choose your hashtags with care. Do not try many variations to see what comes back.
To keep the count, the activity log keeps one row for each hashtag when it is first looked up: the hashtag, Meta's id for it and the time. Nothing found under the hashtag is kept.
Another account's public figures
Ask about another Instagram account by its username. In one request you get:
- its followers, how many accounts it follows and how many posts it has;
- its newest posts (12 unless you ask for more, up to 25), each with its likes, comments and views;
- averages over those posts.
These are the figures that anyone sees in the Instagram app. Meta gives no reach, saves, shares or demographics for an account that is not yours, so none are shown.
It needs no switch. You ask as one of your own Instagram accounts.
What "not available" means
Meta shows these figures only for a public Business or Creator account. For anything else the answer is "not available". That one answer covers:
- a personal account;
- a private or age-restricted account;
- a username that does not exist.
Meta does not say which, so the server cannot either.
The engagement rate is this server's sum
The answer includes an engagement rate. It is not a figure from Meta. The server works it out: the average likes plus the average comments of the posts read, divided by followers, times 100.
It leaves out saves, shares and reach, which Meta gives for no account but your own. The answer states the sum each time. Compare it only with the same sum for another account.
Nothing is stored
Tagged posts, posts found under a hashtag and another account's figures are returned to you and kept nowhere. They do not join History. The one thing kept is the row that counts a hashtag, described above.