HikerAPI Weekly Digest — Week 12, March 2026

Instagram & Meta News

Instagram Tests "AI Best Friend" Feature in DMs
Meta is reportedly testing an AI-powered companion feature within Instagram Direct Messages. The feature lets users interact with a Meta AI persona for recommendations, creative prompts, and casual conversation — separate from the existing Meta AI search. Early testers report the persona can reference past DM conversations (with user consent) to personalize suggestions.

Reels Algorithm Shift: Watch Time Over Saves
Instagram head Adam Mosseri confirmed in a Threads post that the Reels ranking algorithm now weights average watch time more heavily than saves or shares. Creators who focus on retention in the first 3 seconds are seeing higher distribution. The change rolled out globally this week.

Meta Graph API v20.0 Deprecation Reminder
Meta announced that Graph API v20.0 will be fully deprecated on April 15, 2026. Apps still using v20.0 endpoints will receive HTTP 400 errors after that date. Developers should migrate to v21.0 or later. The main breaking change is the removal of the fields=insights shorthand on /media — use /media/{id}/insights instead.

Industry Brief

• TikTok launched a public search API for approved researchers, raising questions about competitive data-access parity with Instagram.
• Threads hit 250M monthly active users, but API access remains limited to posting-only — no read endpoints yet.
• EU Digital Services Act enforcement actions increased: two scraping-related fines were issued to unnamed companies operating without proper legal basis.
• Python 3.13 is now the default in major cloud platforms (AWS Lambda, GCP Functions), bringing faster startup times for API-based workloads.

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