Community Guidelines

Instagram’s Community Guidelines prohibit hate speech and bullying as part of their focus on keeping people safe5. Mosseri has also explained that celebrating violence is prohibited67. Instagram’s published rules prohibit spam, harassment and prohibited nudity, while Instagram for Creators states that posts cannot violate another person’s intellectual property rights, such as by using their content without permission38.

Instagram’s Community Guidelines affect which posts and stories are available to show: Meta’s Transparency Center says Feed removes violating posts from the posts it gathers, while Stories attempts to remove potentially violating stories before ordering them for viewers910. Meta’s Transparency Center also describes filtering in suggested accounts to remove content that may violate the guidelines11. Instagram’s Search explainer says accounts, hashtags and posts removed for Community Guidelines violations cannot appear in Search12. Instagram for Creators says repeatedly posting violating content can result in the entire account being disabled1.

Passing Instagram’s Community Guidelines does not mean a post meets the higher standard for recommendations, because some permitted content may still be sensitive, inappropriate or offensive8. Instagram for Creators explains that content falling short of its Recommendation Guidelines can still be shown to followers in Feed and Stories1. Those recommendation restrictions concern suggestions to people who do not follow the creator12.

Account Status lets creators check content removed for breaking the rules, which Instagram’s Help Center calls Community Standards413. If a Community Guidelines removal appears mistaken, Instagram for Creators says creators can request another review through Account Status4.