OK, let’s talk about method to extract followers from a private Instagram account.

TL;DR: Analyze the “Suggested for You” accounts related to the PoI account.

This section consists of accounts from several categories:
- Followers of the PoI account
- Accounts connected to followers of the PoI account
- Accounts related to your followers/followees
- Accounts that have your phone number in their contact list (😳)
- Others maybe this group is even more interesting

I conducted a small research and found that this list can include up to 20 followers of the PoI account. The total amount of suggested accounts is usually around 70-80.

This is particularly useful when you have no information about the PoI connections: with this feature you can simply start investigating their network, while it is supposed to be hidden. 🤷‍♂️

The challenge is the mixing of different categories of accounts. However, by gathering multiple “Suggested for you” lists for random accounts, you can create a blacklists helping you to filter useless suggestions.

Oh yes, how can you confirm if an account is a follower of the PoI? You need just to check if they follow or are followed by the PoI account. This process is time-consuming and may not work for every account, but it does work. 👍

PRIVACY TIP: None. It’s impossible to get suggestions for certain accounts, though I’m unsure why. If you have any insights, feel free to reach out.

BONUS: How to extract a list of IG URLs after clicking "See all" in Developer Tools (see picture):

$$("._ap3a._aaco._aacw._aacx._aad7._aade").map(el => "https://www.instagram.com/"+el.innerText);

Let me know if you’re interested in more research on this feature or an open-source tool to automate it (I’ve already built a simple one for personal use).