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Hashtags Instagram Won’t Let You Search

67 points| maryvillavon | 10 years ago |thedatapack.com | reply

54 comments

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[+] marc_omorain|10 years ago|reply
This reminds me of Shutterstock's open-source List of Dirty Naughty Obscene and Otherwise Bad Words:

https://github.com/shutterstock/List-of-Dirty-Naughty-Obscen...

[+] Kristine1975|10 years ago|reply
Interesting. "anal" is a bad word in English, but not in German. On the other hand, "naked" is a bad word in German, but not in English.

Maybe I should send a pull request...

[+] dunkerz|10 years ago|reply
Some of the finnish ones:

jätkä - meaning literally "dude" hatullinen - hatful lahtari - an outdated word; I doubt many young people know the meaning/context of it. It was an insulting way to call the people on the white side during our civil war in 1918 pehko - thick hair

[+] rangibaby|10 years ago|reply
黒人 (black person) is on the Japanese list. I wasn't aware that that was a naughty word.
[+] nickdrewe|10 years ago|reply
This wins repo of the day!
[+] eumoria|10 years ago|reply
TIL the word "anilingus." Thanks!
[+] TazeTSchnitzel|10 years ago|reply
> #bi > #gays > #lesbian

Yet another example of mentions of queer identities being filed as pornography.

[+] adekok|10 years ago|reply
Like:

#italiano #kansas #kickoff

Which presumably show racism towards Italians, a hatred of the midwest, and a dislike of football?

Or maybe Instagram has an automated system which correlated hashtags with reported porn. Tags with greater than X% reported porn get banned.

If that's true (and we have no reason to think it is or isn't true), then the banned tags come out simply because the #bi, etc. people happen to use those tags more for porn than (presumably) #straight people.

I'm wary of waving the racism / sexism / whatism flag. We're not all racist. We're not all sexist.

[+] mjolk|10 years ago|reply
Probably because people were using them to post/promote their pornography using terms they know people would search. Please find something more interesting to feign offense over.
[+] kbart|10 years ago|reply
Open any porn site and I'm sure you will find these tags as top categories. It's not Twitter deciding it's pornographic or not, but users that use them as such, so admins simply have to react (unless you want Twitter to be overflown with gay/lesbian/bi porn).
[+] gypsy_boots|10 years ago|reply
> #snapchat

Huh. I wonder if there is some competition going on here

[+] iheartmemcache|10 years ago|reply
That was what by far I found most interesting. Those could be easily labelled as genuinely anti-competitive practices - (i.e., it'd be if Google blocked "Bing" lookups, or vice versa (presuming it was manually added by their staff, rather than auto-triggered by a lot of adult content being flagged at the same time, and a heuristic firing off a ban-signal)). MS got into that whole DOJ trouble for bundling their own browser for way less than that.
[+] abhi3|10 years ago|reply
I would assume a lot of people posting "snapchat leaked" type pics (you know which ones I mean) with the hashtag #snapchat. When all those pics get reported the hastags on them get temporarily banned.
[+] nacs|10 years ago|reply
#kik is also in that list
[+] nickpsecurity|10 years ago|reply
I understand censoring pointless things like "kansas" but "asiandick?" Seriously? They're going to penalize Human A&P students that need help just because the source material is Asian!? Or just the Art majors that could get by with a different theme?
[+] CM30|10 years ago|reply
Well, that was a pretty silly list. Most of the hashtags here seem to be pretty normal or harmless stuff, at least to anyone above the age of about six.

Also, not a fan of this being done because 'some' content under those tags was reported as inappropriate.

[+] Cenk|10 years ago|reply
Some of these are just weird or very specific. I’d love to hear the reasons for them being banned.

> #kissing

> #newyears

> #citycentre

> #hornyyyyyyasf

> #saltwater

[+] abhi3|10 years ago|reply
There's probably little human review here. Most likely, hashtags often used on photos reported by users are automatically flagged.
[+] lobo_tuerto|10 years ago|reply
Also why ban only #russianmilf?
[+] soundwave106|10 years ago|reply
#easter and #kansas also seem kind of weird to me.

(And pity the chefs that want to show off their #eggplant parmesean, I guess...)

[+] transfire|10 years ago|reply
Is there a way to turn the filters off? Otherwise how is this not censorship?
[+] BlahBoy3|10 years ago|reply
It's censorship, but so what? It's a private company. They're allowed to display or hide whatever they please.
[+] zwily|10 years ago|reply
It is censorship, and Instagram is just fine doing it.
[+] sickbeard|10 years ago|reply
#whitegirl?

come on!

[+] GVIrish|10 years ago|reply
Could be because 'white girl' is also slang for cocaine.
[+] siranachronist|10 years ago|reply
no emoji?
[+] striking|10 years ago|reply
Right, I recall a story being run about the blocking of the Eggplant emoji as a search term on Instagram.