The quality of a video on Instagram will depend on its popularity

Social networks and messengers reduce video quality to optimize the space occupied on servers. In addition, this, according to the idea, should increase the speed of loading pages for users. Also, Instagram began to reduce the quality of videos that do not receive a significant number of views within a certain time.

The head of the platform, Adam Mossery, explained that this decision is related to the optimization of the costs of video storage and encoding. Downgrading is applied at an aggregate level and is not targeted at specific users, so as not to create biases.

However, it is now known that more popular videos receive a higher quality encoding, as this is justified by the large number of viewers and high performance requirements. At the same time, the top manager of Instagram emphasized that the difference is insignificant and practically does not affect the level of audience engagement, since the content of the video itself plays a key role.

Some users expressed fears that such a policy could help to strengthen the positions of popular authors, but Mossery assured that algorithms and video quality have less effect on views compared to the interest of the content.