There has been a lot of discussion around Instagram and its quality issues… for years. It is no secret that materials posted directly from a few selected smartphone models look better than from others. But this is not the end of the traps that await users of the platform. It turns out that how good a video will look also depends heavily on… its popularity.
Popular videos on Instagram can count on better quality
Adam Mosseri, the head of Instagram, regularly shares various information about the platform. It is often in his social media that the first announcements or confirmations of tests, noticed by users, appear.
A few days ago, Mosseri took part in a session ask me anythingduring which the topic of the quality of video materials served on the platform was discussed. And he said there:
Generally speaking, we want to display videos at the highest quality possible… But if something isn’t watched for a long time – since the vast majority of views are early – we’ll move to a lower quality video. And then, if it is viewed frequently again, we will re-render the video in a higher quality.
Mosseri says the platform does everything in its power to display the highest quality content that users want to watch. Later, in response to one of the posts on the Threads platform, Mosseri added to the topic:
This works on an aggregate level, not on an individual viewer level. We focus on higher quality (more CPU-intensive coding and more expensive storage of larger files) for creators who generate more views (…)
And as you might expect, it caused a lot of controversy. Because users noticed that new creators who want to appear on the platform automatically have a difficult time. A classic example of inequality, the fight against which turns out to be extremely difficult… not to say hopeless.
How much difference is there in video quality?
There was also a question about what the difference between better and worse quality actually is – and whether it is actually clearly visible. Mosseri also addressed this question and claims that… it is not huge:
This is a valid concern, but in practice it doesn’t seem to matter much because the change in quality isn’t huge, and whether people interact with videos or not is much more based on video content than quality. Quality seems to be much more important to the original creator, who is more likely to take down a video if it looks bad, than to his or her viewers.
Well, it’s no surprise that the creators who have perfected their materials and done everything in their power to make them look as good as possible, and the platform lowers their quality because they don’t click as well as other viral videos, that… they delete them. However, it would be useful to officially explain this issue with examples. Maybe someday.
Source: antyweb.pl
