Ignored Instagram application request with public_content scope returns empty result

Question

I am trying to pull out media with a specific tag. I authorized and received back the token with the scope of "basic" and "public_content". However, the next request is returned with a status code of 200, but empty data, though, for example. The 'london' tag has a lot of content.

https://api.instagram.com/v1/tags/london?access_token= [MY TOKEN]

Is this request invalid or is the Instagram API not working correctly?

Answer 1

In sandbox mode, Instagram only returns data related to sandbox users.

This is written in the docs section of the API behavior :

Data is limited to sandbox users and the 20 most recent environments from each sandbox user.

[...]

As another example, consider an endpoint that returns a list of media: / tags / {tag-name} / media / recent. The response returned by this endpoint will only contain media with the specified tag, as expected. But instead of returning media from any public Instagram user, it will only return media belonging to your sandbox users, limited to the last 20 for each user.

If you create a London tag with your sandbox user, you should see it. After your application has switched to live, you should see all the public "London" tags.

Your request is NOT processed, and the API behaves as described in the documentation.