Instagram Has Overturned The Insta-Ban On #Curvy

It was initially banned after the hashtag violated the app’s policy on nudity.

The picture based social network has reviewed its (very contentious) decision to ban the hashtag #curvy and reinstated it.

#curvy was originally banned because it reportedly violated the app's policy on nudity, something its critics were quick to point out seemed flawed when far more sexually-explicit hashtags were still searchable.

Speaking to the Washington Post about the company's decision to overturn the ban, Nicky Jackson Colaco - Instagram's director of public policy - revealed that the hashtag was removed because it was being used to tag pornography, despite the content having no attachment to the meaning of the traditionally body-positive word in the first place. "This wasn't curvy pornography, this was just irrelevant pornography," she said.

Jackson Colaco also shed some light on why the more sexually-explicit hashtags hadn't been removed from the search, explaining that those terms wouldn't be flagged up or reported by users as much, namely, because they were actually looking for them in the first place. Meanwhile, #curvy would garner a number of reports each day because why would you expect that hashtag to throw up a load of porn on your feed?

"There is nobody who’s cherry-picking terms [to ban]," Jackson Colaco continued. "And the silver lining in this we have been made aware of terms that hadn’t gotten reported. We're trying to be as consistent as possible."

So, there you have it: #curvy is BACK.

21 July 2015, we wrote...

Instagram has taken the controversial move to ban search for the hashtag ‘curvy’ because it violates the app’s policy on nudity… Apparently.

A spokesperson for Instagram issued the following statement to Mashable, which read: "I can confirm that we did block the hashtag #curvy. It was being used to share content that violates our guidelines around nudity. Please note that the block has nothing to do with the term 'curvy' itself."

Huh?

So, does this mean that the word ‘curvy’ brings up more untoward naked stuff on your feed, than say, pornographically obvious hashtags, such as #pornos, #vaginas and, oh, #dicksucking? *Sorry, what?* Because if the problem is nude imagery that 'violates the guidelines', that doesn't go very far to explain why so many other sexual terms are still (very much) searchable on the app.

Users of social media have also been quick to point out that whilst the body-confident term #curvy has been given the boot from the search function, #thin, #fat and #thinspirational (albeit with a content advisory warning about eating disorders) are still present in search, too.

This all begs the question of why are we penalising a term then that promotes a positive body image and - let's face it – one that is used in reference (for the most part) to women?

It's not all bad news though. Instagram users who would have otherwise used the #curvy have taken the matter into their own hands by posting the same images under #curvee instead.

So, take that Insta-police!

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