The quality of videos on the Instagram social network directly depends on the number of views. If content is viewed by an insufficient number of users over a period of time, it may lose clarity.
Executive Director of Meta Adam Mosseri told about this in Threads, reports TechCrunch and The Verge.
"We strive to display the video as high as possible. But if a video is not watched for a long time — because the vast majority of views [videos get] at the beginning — we go to a lower quality. Then, if [the content] starts to get a lot of views again, weʼll play the video at a higher quality,” says Mosseri.
In 2023, Meta already announced that it uses different encodings for videos, depending on the interest of users. However, after the publication of the companyʼs executive director, users criticized this policy. Then Mosseri emphasized that the decision is made by the team, and not by someone personally.
Meta makes the content of accounts that gain more views of higher quality, because encoding heavy files requires advanced technical resources and expensive storage, the official clarified. Some users have suggested that this approach hinders the promotion of lesser-known content creators.
"In practice, it doesnʼt matter much because the change in quality is small. Peopleʼs interaction with content depends more on what the video is about," Mosseri assures.
- In April 2024, Instagram informed about a change to the content recommendation system. Now preference is given to original content and accounts with a small number of followers. This mostly applies to aggregators — accounts that publish content from other users, often without any mention of authorship. The social network will remove such posts from recommendations.
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Author: Anastasiia Mohylevets