Reason for not collecting Instagram Reels Section

[manvik99]

What is the technical reason, we are not able to collect the reels section of instagram, would like to help if it is possible technically.

Cheers!

[dale-wahl]

As Zeeschuimer does not directly download videos/images, reels contain relatively little information (though videos/images can be downloaded later when data is uploaded to 4CAT). But there is no technical reason. It would likely fit best collected separately because the data structure is fairly different (see Tiktok posts vs Tiktok comments).

[stijn-uva]

It depends on what you mean exactly with the 'reels section', but if you mean a user's Reels tab (example), there is simply very little metadata that is available to the browser while the page is loaded. Most information (e.g. user, caption, or timestamp) is not included. This is an example of data that is available:

{
	"media": {
		"pk": "3506906526605045365",
		"id": "3506906526605045365_1216247480",
		"code": "DCrCOfSyu51",
		"media_overlay_info": null,
		"media_type": 2,
		"user": {
			"pk": "1216247480",
			"id": "1216247480"
		},
		"carousel_media": null,
		"image_versions2": {
			"candidates": [thumbnail urls here]
		},
		"preview": null,
		"product_type": "clips",
		"play_count": 38027,
		"view_count": null,
		"like_and_view_counts_disabled": false,
		"comment_count": 10,
		"like_count": 2068,
		"audience": null,
		"clips_tab_pinned_user_ids": [],
		"has_views_fetching": true,
		"original_height": 1920,
		"original_width": 1080
	}
}

So currently there is just not much of substance to collect for Zeeschuimer. Most metadata is only loaded when clicking/opening a reel from the overview page, at which point Zeeschuimer will capture it. You could potentially automate a browser to open all reels one by one, for example with Selenium, but direct capture of reels from the overview page is, unfortunately, currently not possible.