I have written an app which uses the Instagram API to retrieve geotagged posts containing "#sunset" and related tags. On March 22 - 23 2016, the number of posts being collected dropped dramatically. Has anyone else observed this behavior, or do you have any suggestions for what I should look for? Is it possible there has been a change to Instagram's privacy policy that leads to fewer geotagged posts? I do not think it is due to a change in my code (I have not changed the code, and I am actually collecting the posts using two different methods, both of which display this pattern). Nor do I think it is due to my API key suddenly becoming invalid (the key seems to work).
UPDATE: I discovered other people have been having similar problems. See here:
Instagram API /tags/{tag-name}/media/recent changed behaviour
Instagram /v1/tags/{tag-name}/media/recent endpoint doesn't return min_tag_id in pagination block
UPDATE 2: it appears that both the Python + Ruby Instagram clients were deprecated on the same day, March 22, right before everyone started having this problem: https://github.com/facebookarchive/instagram-ruby-gem/commits/master, https://github.com/facebookarchive/python-instagram/commits/master