Instagram Admits It Messed Up by Banning This Hashtag

Update:
As of Friday, Instagram has reinstated the #curvy hashtag. "We want people to be able to express themselves, and hashtags are a great way to do that," a spokesperson told BuzzFeed Life. "At the same time, we have a responsibility to act when we see hashtags being used to spread inappropriate content to our community. In the case of #curvy, we don't like putting restrictions around a term that many people use in very positive ways, so we have decided to unblock the hashtag while taking steps to ensure that it's not used as a vehicle for bad content." Go #curvy away!

Original story:
Instagram has banned yet another hashtag — #curvy — and many users are not happy with the decision. The company recently got heat for removing the search term #nipple, many claiming it was targeting women for nudity as opposed to men.

Instagram decided to eliminate the search term due to its nudity policy, according to BuzzFeed, which first noticed the ban. "A spokesperson from Instagram said the hashtag #curvy is not searchable because, according to the company, it was being used to share images and videos that violated Instagram's community guidelines around nudity," wrote BuzzFeed.

Yet the company still lets #fat exist and refuses to ban other search terms that are almost always full of nude images, such as #dildos, #clitoris, and #snapchat. It also lets other body image hashtags like #thin and #skinny live on the site (though they do come with a warning).

Of course, some people are upset by the new rule.

However, while #curvy is down, Instagram does suggest other terms that are similar.

It doesn't appear that Instagram will budge on this ban, and it's just another example of the company's continually controversial censorship policy.