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Webhook - Instagram Glossary

A webhook is a message sent automatically from one system to another when an event happens. Instagram uses webhooks to notify a connected app in real time about new comments, messages and story replies, which is what makes instant automation possible.

The alternative is polling - repeatedly asking whether anything has changed - which is slower, heavier and rate-limited. Webhooks are why a comment-to-DM automation can reply within seconds rather than on the next check cycle, and that latency difference is visible to the person waiting.

The operational caveat: webhooks can be missed. Networks fail, endpoints time out, and Meta will retry only so many times. Any automation that matters should reconcile against the API periodically rather than assuming the event stream is complete.

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