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Instagram admits that it reduces the quality of underperforming videos

Social media platform Instagram has admitted that it is “biased” towards creators who get more views and reserve high-quality videos for them, while the quality of older, less popular videos drops.

The revelation was made by Adam Mosseri, head of Instagram, in an Ask Me Anything (AMA) video story on Sunday, in which he answered how YouTubers should think about using meta-AI.

Mosseri said the goal is to show users “the highest quality videos” Instagram can offer, and that it uses a dynamic system that emphasizes high quality in videos that get more views.

He said: “If something goes unwatched for a long time because the vast majority of views come at the beginning, we switch to a lower quality video and then, when it gets watched a lot again, we render the higher quality video.”

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Later in Threads, Mosseri responded to a post with the clip from the AMA, saying that the Instagram model works at an “aggregate level, not an individual level” and that higher quality – which includes more CPU-intensive encoding and more expensive storage for larger ones Files included – reserved for creators who generate more views.

There is concern among smaller creators on the platform that this approach could impact their reach and visibility and put them at a disadvantage. However, Mosseri said in Threads that while this is the right concern, it doesn't seem to “play a big role” in practice.

He added: “The quality shift is not big and whether people interact with videos or not depends much more on the content of the video than the quality.” Quality seems to be much more important to the original creator, who is more likely to delete the video, if it looks bad than to its viewers.”

This story first appeared on Performance Marketing World.

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