Instagram made waves recently when they banned #curvy. They’ve since unbanned it, but are now banning #goddess. What? Allegedly it’s because there’s too much porn being passed around on #goddess, so obviously, it must be a porn hashtag. Duh. Seriously, what the hell?
There’s been much to say about Instagram’s attempts at filtering and censoring content on its network. They’ve landed themselves in hot water before when they banned photos of a woman’s period stains. Additionally, when an Australian magazine posted photos of women in bikinis who happened to have some pubic hair showing, those photos ended up getting taken down. The company admitted that the removal of said photos was a mistake, but since then, they’ve made a grip of even more mistakes.
To their credit, Instagram isn’t completely lost when it comes to managing hashtags. When #SandraBland appeared to be banned, it turns out that they were just being especially careful about moderating the hashtag, protecting it from hate speech. They did the same thing for #CaitlynJenner a while back.
Yes, moderating and curating social networks requires a gentle hand a delicate balance. But come on. Why is it that as soon as they pull themselves out of trouble with #curvy, they dive right back in with #goddess? Are they actually learning from their mistakes or not?
(via The Daily Dot)
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