Instagram introduced the ability to follow hashtags in December 2017.
Before this feature, Instagram users could search for a hashtag or tap one in a post, but they generally had to look it up manually. Hashtag following changed that workflow by allowing topic-based content to appear in a user’s feed, alongside posts from followed accounts. It made Instagram function more like an interest network as well as a network of people.
The feature is distinct from Instagram’s original hashtag support, which arrived in January 2011. A hashtag could be searchable for years before users could follow it directly. That difference explains why the two questions have separate dates even though both concern Instagram hashtags.
Following a hashtag also did not guarantee that every matching post would appear. Instagram’s ranking and moderation systems selected content, and spam, blocked tags, and later changes to hashtag search affected what users saw. In 2023, Instagram removed the ability to sort hashtag results by “Recent” for many users, emphasizing curated and popular content.