If you like Instagram Reels, you may have noticed that viral videos often appear sharper and more polished than less popular ones. Multiple factors influence this, from the camera used to record the video to the editing software, all of which the creator can control to an extent. However, one factor remains outside their hands: virality. This plays a significant role in determining whether a video appears in higher or lower quality.
What happened? Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri recently held a Q&A session on the platform, where he confirmed that the platform downgrades the quality of videos based on their view counts. “In general, we want to show the highest-quality video we can... But if something isn’t watched for a long time—because the vast majority of views are in the beginning—we will move to a lower-quality video. And then if it’s watched again a lot, then we’ll re-render the higher quality video,” he explained.
In other words, whether a video goes viral or not—and whether it racks up views—isn’t an exact science. There are general tips and tricks for capturing attention, but there’s no one-size-fits-all manual for reaching millions of views. If there were, every video would go viral. For some videos to go viral, others have to fly under the radar.
This logic applies to most users, but big creators and influencers with millions of followers, have an edge in consistently generating high view counts. Instagram’s approach favors these popular users by giving their videos the highest graphic quality. This may make sense from Meta’s perspective, but it’s a disadvantage for smaller creators: By Instagram’s logic, their videos will rarely appear as sharp as those from top influencers.
It’s not a big deal. According to Mosseri, this disparity isn’t a big issue. When asked if the quality downgrade could hurt smaller creators, Mosseri responded, “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.” He added, “Quality seems to be more important to the original creator, who is more likely to delete the video if it looks poor, than to their viewers.”
That may be true, but it’s also reasonable. Although creating content at an amateur level only requires a smartphone and some creativity, producing higher-quality videos demands a financial investment—a better device, or even a camera, microphone, tripod, and more advanced software. Naturally, smaller creators want their videos to look sharp, as a high-quality image helps capture and retain users’ attention and, ultimately, drives monetization.
However, this system means creators have little control over how viewers see their content because Instagram ultimately decides the quality it’s displayed in. But no one said the social media game was fair.
It’s not black and white... Mosseri also responded to another user who said that this system doesn’t work on an individual level: “It works at an aggregate level, not an individual viewer level.” According to Mosseri, “We bias to higher quality (more CPU-intensive encoding and larger, more expensive file storage) for creators who drive more views. It’s not a binary threshold but rather a sliding scale.”
...nor is it cheap. While users can publish an unlimited amount of content, resources to store and serve it aren’t infinite. Last year, Facebook alone served 4.9 billion video views per day. Managing user-generated content efficiently is so critical that Meta developed its own chip, the Meta Scalable Video Processor, specifically for processing video on demand. And this doesn’t even include content on Instagram and WhatsApp, which also requires storage.
Meta’s approach begins with a simple compression codec and upgrades video quality as content attracts more views. The issue is Meta’s lack of transparency on how much “sufficiently high watch time” a video needs to qualify for a bump in quality. It’s clear, though, that larger creators benefit more easily from this system than smaller or emerging ones.
Image | Alexander Shatov (Unsplash)
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