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If you’re active on Instagram, you’ve probably seen the accounts you follow write captions that end with annoyingly long paragraphs packed with hashtags. Brands and content creators have long used this trick hoping it would cause the social media platform’s algorithm to boost their content. But that’s all about to change.
Adam Mosseri, head of Instagram, announced last Thursday that the platform was “capping hashtags at five per post” through his account’s broadcast channel (a feature Instagram rolled out in 2023 for creators.)
“While I know it can be tempting to use more, a few specific tags actually perform better than a long list of generic ones,” he wrote. “Quality over quantity is key.”
Instagram started to roll out this update last week, but it’ll implement the change gradually, according to an announcement the platform posted to Meta’s Threads app. The rule will apply to both static posts and videos, which Instagram calls reels.
Hashtags served as a useful tool for content creators and marketers in the past, but they seem to have lost relevance in the age of AI search and algorithms.
“While hashtags can help people interested in specific topics find your content, they won’t necessarily increase your content’s visibility,” Mosseri said in an Instagram post from May 2024. Then, in January 2025, he told the Daily Mail that hashtags flat out “don’t work.”
His remarks led several Instagram users to re-evaluate the way they use hashtags—with some abandoning them altogether.
Content creator Marques Brownlee, for example, said during a filmed conversation with Mosseri last year that he regularly shows a screenshot of one of the executive’s Instagram stories to brands that shows a user asking Mosseri, “Do hashtags improve visibility?” and him replying, “no.”
“I just screenshotted that, so anytime a brand’s like, ‘Can we do the hashtag?’ I’ll be like, ‘Here’s the man telling you,’” Brownlee says in the video.
So what’s the best way to use hashtags as a marketer or creator? According to Meta’s Threads post, you need to be intentional about which ones you use and avoid generic tags like #reels or #explore. “Those types of hashtags don’t actually help your content appear in places like [Instagram’s Explore page], and could, in fact, hurt your content’s performance,” the post says.
On a bigger-picture note, Mosseri adds in his announcement: “Focus on working out what kind of content resonates with your audience—that’s what really matters.”
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Annabel Burba
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