Meta-owned Instagram has recently confirmed that the quality of mostly viewed content or popular content is much higher on the platform than compared with other less popular content.
Adam Mosseri, Instagram’s Head, has revealed this in an ‘Ask Me Anything’ session.
On Threads, Lindsey Gamble raised a question about Instagram’s video quality adjustments, saying that the quality that your video (e.g. Reel, Story, etc.) displayed on Instagram may depend on its performance. For example, if someone isn’t watching much of your video, Instagram may reduce its quality.
In response to Lindsey’s question, he explained that Instagram adjusts video quality at an aggregate level, not for individual viewers.
He wrote, “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 theshhold, but rather a sliding scale.”
Higher-quality videos require more space, and low-quality videos save storage space. Instagram lowers the quality of video to lower the load on its servers to save space and energy.
On Threads, Baun proactively asked, “Doesn’t this make it harder for smaller creators to compete?”
In response, he replied, “It’s the right concern, but In practice, it doesn’t seem to matter much, as the quality shift isn’t huge, and whether or not people interact with videos is way more based 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 poor than to their viewers.”
