bug: stories show ads placeholders

[rafaeldamasceno]

Before creating a bug report...

• I have read through the FAQ
• I have made sure this issue has not already been reported previously
• I have made sure this issue is present in the latest version of SCInsta
• I am confident that this bug presents unintended behaviour within the tweak

Description

Since today, when going through the stories, an ad placeholder will show up (grey background, no name and no icon).

Minimal Reproduction

Open unseen stories, after going through 3 of them an ad placeholder will show up when going to the next user.

SCInsta Version

v1.1.1

Instagram Version

v418.2.0

Install Type

Sideloaded

Device Info

Model: iPhone 13 Pro Max
iOS Version: 26.4.1
I’m actually running the app in LiveContainer.

[SoCuul]

This is most likely (another (kms)) A/B test they're trying out. I haven't gotten them at all in my app, so am unable to reproduce at the moment unfortunately.

If you could enable FLEX in the "debug" settings of SCInsta, click select, then select the placeholder on the screen and click the "views" button. If you could just send a screenshot of the view hierarchy I could potentially try to see where it's coming from.

[rafaeldamasceno]

Sadly (or fortunately??) I stopped getting these placeholders, so I couldn’t even get some screenshots. I’ll close the ticket and reopen with the debug info if I get back on the AB.

[rafaeldamasceno]

Well, it turns out I immediately got them again after closing this issue 😭 @SoCuul if you could please reopen it.

Let me know if there’s anything else I can give you to help you debug.

[rafaeldamasceno]

To give some extra context: I have the setting to not send the stories seen receipts enabled.

I thought these were ad placeholders since they matched the ad placement pattern very well, and I could slide (but not tap) to continue watching content.

However, I now see even more erratic behavior with the stories besides these empty story containers (missing stories in the seen status, wrong ordering, etc.) so these might not even be ads, just stories failing to load properly because the local seen tracking might not be working correctly. But it also might be vice-versa (these ads are breaking the local seen tracking).

It would be nice if I could reset the local seen status to test it out.

[SoCuul]

Oh interesting. Well, the way the "seen receipt" blocking works is by preventing the seen state "uploader" from initializing. So it stores which stories have been viewed locally, but won't actually notify the server that it's been seen (hence the story poster getting a seen receipt).

You could try this, and see if it makes any difference. It should reset the local story seen states, though I'm not sure if there's any other manager within the app that also needs to be reset. Might as well try :)

Reset.Local.Seen.Receipts.mp4