How would one retrieve an old message on Instagram if one side deletes it? It looks like it's gone forever, but there has to be a way to retrieve it, right?

thanks

a sender can delete a message from the receivers phone, even while the receiver is viewing it.

"Let's all rob the bank at 6pm" and then delete

If you see a post like that, the app has a "report" feature. That saves it for their review. Beyond that, you can go to their Help site and they have mechanisms for reporting other types of abuse. You'll probably never hear from them directly, but they will look at it. I know two people who have had Instagram accounts deleted for posting inappropriate content, and both were turned in by other people. So they DO review the reports.

But if you see a post about robbing a local bank, you should be calling your local police. Instagram has an office to deal with law enforcement requests.

User communities, Wiki's, and FAQ's. It's growing increasingly rare for a web-only or mobile-only company to have dedicated support reps. In Instagrams case, I don't think they have much beyond their FAQ.

and, the FAQ isn't very friendly, either.

I was looking to retrieve some deleted messages related to a possible bullying incident.

If you report bullying posts right away, Instagram will delete them and possibly delete the account of the person who sent them. If the posts have been removed, there's nothing you can do. If the bullying rises to the level of a criminal action, the records can be recovered by the police, but it will take a warrant or subpoena.

Such is the nature of social media.

makes it pretty easy to abuse then, I think.

It's not only easy to do, it's easy to cover up. The ephemeral nature of the tools makes it easy for the bullies to protect themselves.

in the cache of the device? Would a record be there at all?

If the phone hasn't been used much since, it's theoretically possible to recover deleted Instagram photos from your phones cache. Like any other deleted file recovery, it will depend on whether that particular storage space has been overwritten. You'll need to find someone who knows how to do that kind of recovery though. And above all, don't use the phone until someone can look at it.

Text comments are probably gone because they aren't cached. Instagram doesn't generate static copies of its screens on the device, so there's nothing to recover.

that's been very helpful.