The Banned Instagram Hashtags You Can't Use Anymore

The Banned Instagram Hashtags You Can't Use Anymore

As far as social media goes, Instagram appears relatively harmless, right? Wrong. The photo sharing app has just gone and banned a bunch of very random hashtags so we can’t abuse them anymore.

Nick Drewe of The Data Pack recently compiled a list of banned and restricted hashtags on Instagram, from the expected to the weird. “Instagram appears to have changed the way it censors hashtags now,” Drewe told The Huffington Post. “There are two levels of censorship. Hashtags can either have an outright block, and return no results, or a sort of ‘soft’, often more temporary censorship with around 30 results.”

Instagram typically has a ‘top posts’ and ‘most recent’ section where tagged photos will appear, but if a hashtag is being abused, Instagram will remove that ‘most recent’ section and only display top posts.

The completely banned hashtags are pretty obvious and include things like #boobies, #fetish, #girlsgonewild, #instababe, #kinky, #nipples and #porn.

Some of the stranger hashtags that are now restricted include:

  • #alone
  • #asia
  • #balenciaga
  • #citycentre
  • #carving
  • #desk
  • #direct
  • #easter
  • #edm
  • #eggplant
  • #elevator
  • #gloves
  • #happythanksgiving
  • #italiano
  • #kansas
  • #master
  • #newyears
  • #publicrelations
  • #thought
  • #todayimwearing
  • #valentinesday
  • #workflow

So don’t even think about putting your #balenciaga #gloves on if you live in #kansas, because Instagram doesn’t like it.