There’s a reason why some Instagram videos in your feed may look better than others. In a recent Ask Me Anything video posted to his Instagram page (and captured by another user), Instagram head Adam Mosseri said the company purposefully adjusts the quality of the videos to optimize for both watch time and network conditions.
“In general, we want to show the highest-quality video we can when watching a video, Story or Reel or photo,” Mosseri said in the video. “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.”
If the video gets more visibility and takes off, the company will render a higher-quality version. Mosseri added that if Instagram is serving a video to someone on a slower internet connection, it will show them the lower-quality video so it loads more quickly. He added later on Threads, however, that this process works on an aggregate level, not on an individual viewer level.
A representative for Instagram said the company did not have any 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 advances the quality of videos when they’re watched by more users as a way to prevent the system from overloading.
Some Threads users, however, expressed concern with Mosseri’s latest comments, noting the approach could favor established creators and make it harder for emerging ones to compete. Mosseri wrote in a Threads response that this was a “right concern,” but said the quality difference isn’t significant. Mosseri also said that people’s engagement with videos is influenced more by the content itself than by the quality of the video.
In November 2022, the company said it faced challenges to keep up its capacity to provide video uploads for its growing user base. In 2023, the company said there were 4 billion video views per day on Facebook alone.
