
Hashtags Instagram Won’t Let You Search - maryvillavon
http://thedatapack.com/banned-instagram-hashtags-update/#more-171
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marc_omorain
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...](https://github.com/shutterstock/List-of-Dirty-Naughty-Obscene-and-
Otherwise-Bad-Words)

~~~
Kristine1975
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...

~~~
runarb
It may that they did not add it for a reason also. There are a lot of edge
cases because many potentially dirty concepts are made up of words that are
not bad alone. For example a text can have both "girls" and "nude" in it
without being vulgar, but if it has the phrase "nude girls" the chance for it
being pornografic is much higher.

( Searchdaimon have done some research on this and have a list if anyone is
intrested: [https://github.com/searchdaimon/adult-
words](https://github.com/searchdaimon/adult-words) )

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TazeTSchnitzel
> #bi > #gays > #lesbian

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

~~~
adekok
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.

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

If that was a consistent pattern, maybe, but I am yet to hear of it.

> Or maybe Instagram has an automated system which correlated hashtags with
> reported porn.

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

Maybe it's automated, sure. Maybe it's not directly intended. Doesn't change
the outcome.

Also, no, everyone is racist and sexist to varying extents, it's not a binary.
Humans are imperfect.

~~~
mjolk
>Also, no, everyone is racist and sexist to varying extents, it's not a
binary. Humans are imperfect.

Not everyone and everything is racist and sexist, stop peddling this
histrionic narrative. If it's automated, are you claiming that algorithms are
racist or sexist? The outcome isn't shaming a sexual orientation any more than
x + 3 = 9 is "six shaming."

~~~
drdeca
Presumably the claim would be that it contributes to a phenomenon which is
considered harmful, and that there is an obligation to have it not do that.

Now, I don't know that I agree with that claim (certainly not without
reservations at least), but I think that the idea of an algorithm contributing
to a harmful phenomenon, and that being bad, is not an obviously wrong idea.

I don't think your argument against theirs is a very good one. Something
better than your x + 3 = 9 quip would be needed to refute it.

I'm saying this as someone who also disagrees with the worldview you are
arguing against.

/epistemic virtue signaling

~~~
mjolk
The (management or computer) algorithm is likely designed to cut down on
pornography and/or "offensive content"; the correlation of the terms bi,
lesbian, or gay as metadata to explicit images is likely to be large on a
visual platform. If anything is offensive, it's the quickness to jump to "I'm
offended by logical explanations and I refuse to come up with practical
solutions." Which is to say, I believe that the claim was infantile and
deliberatively obtuse. Obviously it wasn't meant as a slight against sexual
identity and if you want things to be better, get to work and stop complaining
(which is unlikely to happen because complaining is easy and fixing things is
hard).

Sometimes a cute riposte or simple response is all that's needed to defuse
absurdity. Debating with someone plainly calling everyone racist and sexist
isn't likely to bear fruit.

I wish we could get to a state in which the professionally offended would stop
wasting others' time and encouraging this doublespeak-nonsense game -- there's
only so many minutes in the day and we both wasted daylight on this.

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gypsy_boots
> #snapchat

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

~~~
iheartmemcache
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.

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nickpsecurity
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?

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CM30
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.

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Cenk
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

~~~
Kristine1975
First Google result for #hornyyyyyyasf is:
[https://www.instagram.com/explore/tags/hornyyyyyyasf/](https://www.instagram.com/explore/tags/hornyyyyyyasf/)

Instagram, you're doing it wrong!

~~~
91bananas
Dang.

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transfire
Is there a way to turn the filters off? Otherwise how is this not censorship?

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BlahBoy3
It's censorship, but so what? It's a private company. They're allowed to
display or hide whatever they please.

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ajmarsh
#workflow ?!?

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sickbeard
#whitegirl?

come on!

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GVIrish
Could be because 'white girl' is also slang for cocaine.

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FilterSweep
This, also it is a term often used by escorts promoting their services on
instagram.

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gyosko
> #italiano

Really?

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kelukelugames
Italiano looks PG at worst.

[https://www.instagram.com/explore/tags/italiano/](https://www.instagram.com/explore/tags/italiano/)

Kansas is weird.

[https://www.instagram.com/explore/tags/kansas/](https://www.instagram.com/explore/tags/kansas/)

~~~
WillPostForFood
“Recent posts from #kansas are currently hidden because the community has
reported some content that may not meet Instagram’s community guidelines.”

You aren't seeing the presumably bad stuff when you go to /explore because it
is being hidden.

~~~
kelukelugames
Ah thanks. Now I'm more curious.

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siranachronist
no emoji?

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striking
Right, I recall a story being run about the blocking of the Eggplant emoji as
a search term on Instagram.

