from Hacker News

The Banned Hashtags of Instagram

by nickdrewe on 8/26/13, 11:38 AM with 20 comments

• by DjangoReinhardt on 8/26/13, 2:05 PM

  You can always use it for good, you know. ;)

  The Instagram API returns an APINotAllowedError (response code 400) when you search for one of these hashtags. I'm using it to automatically identify and categorize NSFW hashtags for one of my projects, HashPix. You can see it in action at http://hashpix.herokuapp.com/

• by jpttsn on 8/26/13, 12:28 PM

  This list contains eg. both #sex and #thesexpistols. It seems more likely that anything containing the substring "sex" is banned. The list, then, is just examples, rather than some exhaustive, official blacklist.

• by parennoob on 8/26/13, 2:07 PM

  Why is #thinsipration banned again?

  In a country with 35.7% obesity (e.g. 203 pounds at 5'9" = obese), you'd think it would be a good thing to let people inspire others to get back to normal weight.

• by cdonnellytx on 8/26/13, 2:54 PM

  Looks like a clear case of the Scunthorpe problem:

  http://hashpix.herokuapp.com/s/scunthorpe (thanks @DjangoReinhardt!)

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scunthorpe_problem

  (EDIT: still can't format comments correctly)

• by dccoolgai on 8/26/13, 12:48 PM

  Interesting...George Carlin would be proud.

• by pcunite on 8/26/13, 12:46 PM

  Is #iDoNotCare also banned?

• by dan1234 on 8/26/13, 1:52 PM

  I wonder how many lists the person who searched for that lot is now on?

• by epynonymous on 8/26/13, 1:54 PM

  not sure about everyone else, but the first one i looked for starts with an "n", but it didn't make the list, how come?

• by mrcactu5 on 8/26/13, 1:55 PM

  i didn't know you could put that on instagram...

• by cfesta9 on 8/26/13, 4:58 PM

  #knockers