The head of Instagram and Threads at Meta, Adam Mosseri, recently disclosed that the service adjusts the quality of videos based on their reach.
Mosseri revealed that more views on the video, means a better quality while lesser view videos are displayed in a worse quality. This is in an effort to maximise the resources put into the content that can attract interest from the target audience.

Understanding the Quality Adjustment Mechanism

This is aggregate, not individualised quality adjustment according to Mosseri. He explained, "We bias to higher quality for creators who drive more views. It's not a binary threshold, but rather a sliding scale."

Questions and Criticisms from the Users

The announcement was a wave of questions and criticisms from the users, with many concerned that the approach favours established creators over new ones.

Critics say this system may result in a cycle where popular creators are always on top of the platform, making it hard for small creators to break through.

However, Mosseri further stated that the general impact of changes in quality on engagement is very low, and it is based more on content relevance to viewers.

Adjustments Based on User Experience

It was also said that Instagram reduces video quality depending on a user's internet speed to load the content faster. He said, "If something isn't watched for a long time… we will move to a lower quality video, and if it's watched again a lot, then we'll re-render the higher quality video."

Balancing Quality and Fairness for Creators

Remarks made by Mosseri in adjusting the video quality raised the issue of balancing improvement of user experience with equal opportunity provision to all creators. For instance, the adjustment of the ranking algorithms on Instagram towards favouring smaller creators.