Ever wondered why some of your Instagram videos look blurry, while others are sharp and detailed? This is because on this social network, the quality of your video apparently depends on its number of views. This is what Adam Mosseri, the boss of Instagram, explained in a recent video available on Threads.
The more a video is viewed, the better it is encoded
Here’s an excerpt from Mosseri’s explanation:
In general, we want to show the highest quality video possible… But if something isn’t viewed for a long time – because the vast majority of views happen at the beginning – we will move to a lower quality video. And if it gets a lot of views again, we’ll re-render the video in better quality.
Instagram is therefore dedicating more resources to videos from “creators who generate the most views,” Mosseri said in response to a Threads post repeating this excerpt. The goal is to “show people the highest quality content possible.”
A system that benefits popular creators?
Doesn’t this approach risk putting small creators at a disadvantage? This is “the right question to ask” according to Mosseri, but he assures that the difference in quality “is not huge”. And that people interact with videos based on their content, not their quality.
Meta, the parent company of Instagram, had already explained in 2021 that it would not be able to keep up with the growing pace of videos uploaded (4 billion streams per day on Facebook alone). To save resources, only the most popular videos receive the most extensive processing. New videos receive more basic encoding, which then improves if they gain popularity.
A virtuous circle for the stars, vicious for the others?
Some users fear that this system creates a virtuous circle for star creators (quality videos which reinforce their popularity) and a vicious circle for the smaller ones (restricted quality which prevents them from breaking through).
But for Mosseri, quality turns out to be “much more important for the original creator than for the viewers.” A point of view that does not convince everyone. The debate is launched on the impact of this approach for the visibility of creators. In any case, we can only praise the transparency of Meta and Instagram in the way their systems encode videos.
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