The Real Reason Instagram Lowers Video Quality—And It’s Not What You Think!
Adam Mosseri, head of Instagram, recently explained why some videos on Meta platforms look low quality after a while.
For starters, it is all about performance. When asked about older stories appearing “blurry” in highlights, Mosseri shared that they aim for high-quality playback. But, if a video goes unwatched for too long—since most views happen right after posting—Instagram will downgrade its quality to save resources. If the video gets popular again, they’ll restore its original quality.
In general, we want to show the highest quality video we can when someone is watching a story, reel, or photo. In that case, it’s a photo, but still, if something isn’t watched for a long time—because the vast majority of views are in the beginning—we will move to a lower quality video. Then, if it’s watched again a lot, we will render the higher quality video. Also, if we are serving a video to someone on a slow internet connection, we will serve a lower quality video so that it loads quickly, as opposed to giving them a spinner. It depends; it’s a pretty dynamic system, but the goal is to show people the highest quality content that we can.
He added that Instagram prioritizes higher quality (more processing and storage) for creators with larger view counts. This sparked some frustration among smaller creators who feel it puts them at a disadvantage. Meta has explained that they use different video processing based on popularity to manage computing power effectively.
It works at an aggregate level, not an individual viewer level. We bias to higher quality (more CPU intensive encoding and more expensive storage for bigger files) for creators who drive more views. It’s not a binary threshold, but rather a sliding scale.
The system isn’t tailored to each viewer, Mosseri explained, but works on a sliding scale. When a smaller creator questioned its fairness, Mosseri noted that viewers often focus on the content, not quality. Quality tends to matter more to creators themselves, who might delete videos if they appear poor, while viewers rarely notice. Still, not everyone agrees with his assessment.
H/T: @lindseygamble / Threads.
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