Instagram Lowers the Quality of Some Videos in Your Feed. Here’s Why

There’s a reason why some Instagram videos in your feed may look better than others. In a recent Ask Me Anything video posted on his Instagram page (and picked up by another user), Instagram head Adam Mosseri said the company deliberately adjusts the quality of videos to work for both viewing time and network conditions.

“In general, we want to show the highest quality video that we can see when we watch a video, a Story or a Reel or a picture,” Mosseri said in the video. “But if something can be watched for a long time, because most of the views are at the beginning, we will move to a lower quality video.”

If the video is more visible and takes off, the company will offer a higher quality version. Mosseri added that if Instagram serves a video to someone on a slow internet connection, it will show them a low-quality video so it loads faster. He added later in Threads, however, that this process works at the aggregate level, not at the individual viewer level.

An Instagram representative said the company had no further comment beyond what Mosseri said in his video.

In a May 2023 blog post, Instagram’s parent company Meta described a tiered process that improves the quality of videos when viewed by multiple users as a way to prevent the system from overloading.

Some Threads users, however, expressed concern over Mosseri’s recent comments, noting that the approach could favor established creators and make it harder for up-and-comers to compete. Mosseri wrote in a Threads response that this was a “valid concern,” but said the difference in quality was not significant. Mosseri also said that people’s interactions with videos are more influenced by the content itself than the quality of the video.

In November 2022, the company said it faced challenges in maintaining its capacity to provide video uploads to its growing user base. By 2023, the company said there will be four billion video views per day on Facebook alone.