api/instagram: prefer graphql over embed for posts#1554
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Jun 21, 2026
(cherry picked from commit 27a1089) imputnet#1554
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what happened
When scraping the embed HTML for an Instagram post, carousel ("multipost") posts can expose media through a
contextJSONpayload. This property is empty for single-video posts, but appears for posts with multiple media items.The problem is that, if a "multipost" has multiple videos, Instagram marks the first video node with
is_video, but does not include a usablevideo_url.The extractor then checks for both
is_videoandvideo_urlbefore treating a node as downloadable video media:cobalt/api/src/processing/services/instagram.js
Line 308 in a636575
Because the affected node is missing
video_url, the extractor cannot expose it as avideoand falls back to treating it as aphoto.This also appears to affect Instagram's official embed for the same "multipost" post. Example from the original issue:
embed2.mp4
what changed
This pull request changes the Instagram post fallback order so that the GraphQL API is tried before the embed HTML scrape.
GraphQL still returns data for single-video posts, and it also returns the correct
video_urlfor the affected "multipost" posts. Keeping embed HTML as a later fallback preserves the existing recovery path without letting incomplete embed data win too early.This fixes #1550