In an AMA this weekend, Instagram boss Adam Mosseri offered insight into why some videos on the platform continue to degrade in quality long after publication, and it all comes down to performance. Responding to a question about old stories looking “blurry” in highlights, Mosseri said: “In general, we want to show videos in the best quality possible. But if something goes unwatched for a long time – because the vast majority of views come at the beginning – we will switch to a lower quality video.” If the video later regains popularity, “we will re-render the video with higher quality.” he said in the answer, which was reposted by a Threads user (discovered by). The edge).

However, in a follow-up reply, Mosseri added further: “We are focusing on higher quality (more CPU-intensive encoding and more expensive storage for larger files) for creators who generate more views.” The comment has sparked concern in the responses of small YouTubers, who say it puts them at a disadvantage when competing with others with larger platforms. Meta has previously explained that as part of managing its computing resources, it “uses different encoding configurations to process videos based on their popularity.”

The performance system “works at an aggregate level,” Mosseri said, “not at the level of individual audience members…It is not a binary measure (sic) but rather a sliding scale.” In response to a user who questioned fairness for Questioning smaller YouTubers, Mosseri said the quality shift “doesn't seem to play a big role” in practice as it “isn't big” and viewers seem to place more value on video content than quality. “Quality seems to be much more important to the original creator, who is more likely to delete the video if it looks bad, than to its viewers,” he said. Understandably, not everyone seems convinced.