Instagram is a place for photos

first and foremost, and while this fact gets less and less recognizable with the introduction of IGTV and InstaStories – the premise has always remained – celebrate and share pretty photos.

‘The gram’ is also one of the most dynamically evolving apps out there and they are relentless in keeping the experience a positive one. In the same way Starbucks selectively chooses its holiday music, Instagram improves their algorithm to improve your enjoyment and experience; and improve your perspective of the Instagram brand.

In one major move Instagram admitted to shadow-banning users temporarily if they consistently violated the apps Terms of Service. This means a banned user might not even know their posts are not being delivered normally, unless they notice a drastic engagement drop.

Instagram maintains a list of banned hashtags.

This is a complicated subject and has been re-written about a number of different times, with a lot mixed messages. We wanted to take some time and see if we could actually come up with anything solid. Here’s what we got. 

We started with a list of banned hashtags we found while researching blog topics to write about to be totally honest. The list was intriguing enough for us to take note of as something to experiment with later. Experiment we did, but not before a little research. We almost decided not to write about this at all, but it seems like everyone who writes about Instagram does a lot of speculating. It’s hard not to. Let’s start with some notable excerpts from the list – which we’re including below in as it seems to be a credible representation.

As we mentioned most of the research we read was pretty speculative, but from what we’re able to gather with a grain of salt is that hashtags are banned from time to time, and can remain banned permanently, for a few months or even just for a few days. So that’s what we have to go on, unfortunately no real idea as to WHY these particular words are on the no-no list. We can only speculate misuse or over-use as the primary reasons for hashtag banning on Instagram.

So how do we know Instagram is actually banning hashtags? This question brings us back to our list and in particular our favourite taboo hashtag “#desk”.

Look what happens when we search the hashtag #desk. It comes up, albeit not as prominently as we would expect, but it shows up. We can then look at the top posts of desks. However, should we choose to glance at the recent posts of “#desks” we’re stopped short by a discouraging and rather ominous message. Take a look.

So there is definitely hashtags that are being singled out as problems, for one reason or another.

Finally, for all the Instagram #trolls out there here is the 2018 list of banned Instagram words, please note the actual number of banned hashtags could be as high as 114,000 in total, so we hear. 

A

adultlife
alone
asia
assday
attractive

B

babe
beautyblogger
Beyonce
bikinibody
boho
books
brain
BadSugarMommyMakeover

C

costumes
curvy
curvygirls

D

daddylove
date
dating
desk
direct
dm

E

easter
eggplant
elevator

F

fishnets
fitnessgirls

G

girlsonly
gloves
goddess
graffitiigers

H

hardworkpaysoff
happythanksgiving
humpday

I

ig
instamood
iphonegraphy
italiano
instagood
instadaily
igers
instagramhub

K

kansas
killingit
kissing

L

lean
like
lingerie

M

master
models
mustfollow

N

nasty
newyears
newyearsday

P

petite
popular
pornfood
pushups
puppydogmondays

S

sallyhansen
saltwater
shit
shower
single
singlelife
skype
snap
snapchat
snowstorm
sopretty
stranger
streetphoto
sunbathing
swole

T

tag4like
tanlines
teens
tgif
thighs
thought
todayimwearing

U

undies

V

valentinesday

W

woman
womancrushwednesday
women
workflow
wtf

Can you believe #valentinesday ?! #wtf?

So how do you tell if your hashtags are banned?

This part is pretty straightforward. If you go to enter a tag and it doesn’t show up automatically in the dropdown then the tag is on the no-no list. Just use something else. #anythingelse

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