The wording is telling:
> Instagram/YouTube could just try …
Yes, of course they can try anything. That statement is pretty much always going to be true regardless of what you replace the … with.
If this app were to gain traction and start to be seen as a real problem by IG/YT, they would have all legal grounds to act. They can totally sue the app creator and they would very likely win the case under the CFAA.
How exactly is this disinformation?
It is speculative, but calling it disinformation is dishonest, especially since you then presented your completely unargumented claim that they somehow won’t even consider it. It is totally in the realm of possibilities and hence IMO something to keep in mind when considering selling this sort of app/service.
Providing a paid interface to a service is very different. You might be taking the browser only part of it and combining it with an extension and selling it as a product. To me that is a new interface.
I'd love to see the EFF or similar take on Big (Ad)tech and settle this in court.
They've gone after youtube-dl and lost, Invidious is still there, etc.
A somewhat related legal case from long ago: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hush-A-Phone_v._United_States