Instagram lowers the video quality of disliked videos

The popularity of an Instagram video can affect its actual video quality: According to Adam Mosseri (Meta executive who leads Instagram and Threads), the most popular videos are shown in high quality, while the less popular videos are shown in low quality.

In a video (via The Verge), Mosseri said Instagram tries to show “the highest quality video we can get,” but said, “if something gets watched for a long time — because most of the views are in. initially — we’ll move to a lower quality video.”

This is not entirely new information; Meta wrote last year about using different encoding settings for different videos depending on their popularity. But after someone shared Mosseri’s video on Threads, many users had questions and criticisms, with one going so far as to describe the company’s approach as “really crazy.”

The interview prompted Mosseri to provide more details. First, he clarified that these decisions are made on an “aggregate level, not an individual level,” so it’s not a situation where individual viewer interactions will affect the quality of the video played.

“We prefer higher quality (more CPU encoding and more expensive storage for larger files) for creators who drive more views,” added Mosseri. “It’s not binary [threshold]but a sliding scale.”

A number of users also suggested that this approach created a system that privileges popular creators over smaller ones – popular creators get to post at a higher quality, which strengthens their popularity, while smaller creators can’t break through.

Mosseri said it’s “a valid concern,” but said, “In reality it doesn’t seem to matter that much, since the quality change isn’t that big and [whether] or the non-interaction of people and videos is based more on the content of the video than the quality. ” He said quality is “very important to the original creator.”