A ProPublica report describes how the investigative journalism publication uses public posts on Instagram to find leads for stories. In one such story, a reporter wrote about a weekend getaway attended by new House Financial Services Committee Chairman Jeb Hensarling (R-TX) and banking industry officials. The reporter found out who was attending the getaway by using one banking lobbyist’s public Instagram post and looking at the time and location. Though Instagram has no search function, it does have an application programming interface with a “Media Search” endpoint “that returns data both by timeframe and distance from a certain latitude and longitude,” the report states.
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