Field notes
Playbooks, teardowns and the occasional argument — everything we have learned helping creators grow across every major platform.
TikTok publishes two documents. One says what gets removed; the other says what is allowed to stay and will not be recommended, and the second one is longer.
Instagram publishes two separate rulebooks. One decides whether a post stays up; the other decides whether anyone who does not follow you ever sees it, and it never sends a notification.
Most of what gets called clickbait is taste. A narrow slice of it is covered by published policy, and confusing the two is why the advice on this subject is so bad.
This is the one hashtag category that is a matter of published policy rather than rumour. Every network with an inauthentic-engagement rule covers these tags by name.
A banned hashtag can quietly suppress a post, and no platform tells you. Here is how to test a tag before you use it, in order of likelihood.
Before blaming the algorithm, eliminate the five settings that remove a video from search outright. Each has a check that takes under a minute.