Back By Popular Demand: Instagram Is Unblocking ''Curvy''

Source: BERTRAND GUAY / Getty

Instagram has restored #Curvy from the block abyss after a week of controversy following the hashtag’s initial ban.

Via The Washington Post:
Instagram first prevented users from searching for photos with the term last week, prompting a huge backlash from users and women’s advocacy groups who were outraged to see a term normally associated with body-positive messages removed from the site. A spate of replacement hashtags, including “curvee,” “bringcurvyback” sprang up to fill in the gap.
The problem was that the #curvy hashtag was being used for other reasons, said Nicky Jackson Colaco, Instagram’s director of public policy. Namely, pornography.
And the tag was overrun, she said. Instagram has protocols in place to flag when any term is being consistently associated with content that breaks the company’s terms of service. Jackson Colaco said that Instagram removes several tags every day when analysis from the company’s automated and human content filtering systems get reports from users that they’ve become a problem. And at some point last week, #curvy hit the tipping point.
The company’s decision to block #curvy didn’t have to do with body types, as in “curvy pornography.” It was that unrelated pornography began popping up under the hashtag, and it eventually got overrun to the point where the masterminds behind IG had enough.
However, the block drew the ire of critics who felt that this had more to do with body shaming than anything else. Detractors also noted that other tags with sexually explicit meanings weren’t blocked. According to Jackson, the #curvy hashtag became an issue because it was being reported in extremely  high volumes as the result of people most likely searching the hashtag for one thing and getting blindsided by something else, aka the porn.
She added that the company understands that the term is important for people who use it to portray positive body images, so that is why the ban was lifted.
IG will probably just find other ways to get rid of unwanted content moving forward.
Speaking of banned hashtags, remember #EggplantFriday? Ahem.
Anyway, was it that big of a deal for IG to remove #curvy? To me it seems that someone who wanted to spread the message of body positivity would have done so with or without the hashtag as long as they can still post photos, and use other hashtags instead.
Was this more about gaining likes, followers and narcissism via use of the hashtag, or nah?