The popularity of an Instagram video can affect the actual video quality. According to Adam Mosseri (a meta executive who leads Instagram and Threads), more popular videos will be shown in higher quality, and less popular videos will be shown in lower quality.
In the video (via The Verge), Mosseri says that Instagram tries to show “the highest quality videos possible,” but that “if something isn't viewed for a long time, a large percentage of the views are “Because I'm here,” he said. At first you will move to lower quality videos. ”
This is not entirely new information. Meta wrote last year about using different encoding settings for different videos depending on their popularity. But when someone shared Mosseri's video on Threads, many users questioned and criticized it, with one user even going so far as to call the company's approach “truly crazy.”
The discussion prompted Mosseri to provide further details. First, he clarified that these decisions are being made at a “collective level, not an individual level,” and that there is no situation in which individual viewer engagement will affect the quality of the video played.
“We prioritize higher quality (more CPU-intensive encoding and more expensive storage for larger files) for creators who get more views,” Mosseri said. added. “Not binary [threshold]rather a sliding scale. ”
Many users also suggested that this approach would create a system that privileges popular creators over smaller creators. Popular creators are able to post with the highest quality, which strengthens their popularity, while smaller creators are unable to make a breakthrough.
Mr Mosseri said it was a “valid concern”, but argued that “the change in quality is not that big and it doesn't really seem to matter that much”. [whether] Whether people interact with a video depends more on the content of the video than on its quality. He said quality turned out to be “much more important to the original creators.”