His simple system is called my own insta ;) and it consists of some javascript and PHP to create a nice progressive web app photo diary and backend that can be accessed just fine from a mobile device. It is available on GitHub for anyone interested in having their own.

This project came up because [Niklas] sometimes found himself working on small projects or experiments that aren't destined for proper documentation, but nevertheless could benefit from being shared as a photo with a short description. This dovetails with what many social networks offer, except that those platforms also come with other aspects [Niklas] doesn't particularly want. His online photo diary solves this by having a simple back end with which he can upload, sort, and caption photos in an easy way even from a mobile device.

Rolling one's own solution to some small core functionality offered by a social network is one way to avoid all the extra baggage, but another method is to simply automate away all the pesky social bits with a robot.