If you've ever uploaded a photo to Facebook or Instagram, chances are it exists in ASCII renditions, if you know where to look.
Facebook has created ASCII art – that is, recreating your photos in text characters – from photos so that anyone can find them. The feature was first spotted by Twitter user Mathias Bynens and has already been confirmed by others.
The photo above, uploaded to Mark Zuckerberg's Instagram account, shows the original version of the image he uploaded with InstagramKevin Systrom and the hidden ASCII text.
As Bynens points out, you can find alternative images by adding “.html” or “.txt” to the end of an image’s URL. The former extension creates a color image, while the latter creates a black-and-white one. In reality, taking an image isn’t as simple as just taking it to Instagram or Facebook.
First, you need to get the URL for the image itself, not the link to the post that accompanies it. On Facebook, you can do this by right-clicking on an image and selecting “Open in new tab” or “Copy image URL.” Once you have the URL open in a new tab, look for the “.jpg” extension. If the .jpg extension appears at the end of the URL, then you simply need to add .html or .txt to get the ASCII.
On Facebook, the trick only works for publicly posted photos , and it won't work if there are any extra characters after the ".jpg" in the URL, even if you remove them. It's not clear exactly why this works with some images and not others, but we might be able to get it to work after some experimentation.
For Instagram, the process is a little more reliable, albeit more complicated. You’ll need to open the source code for an image, which you can do by right-clicking and selecting “View Page Code” to find the image’s URL. Once you’ve opened the source code, the easiest way to find the URL is by searching the page (Ctrl + F) for “.jpg.” Then, copy and paste the URL into your browser and add the .html or .txt extensions.
The process is a bit confusing and it's still not clear why Facebook has something like this as a "hidden feature," but let's enjoy it until we find out.
