Adam Mosseri, head of Instagram, explains in an AMA video why some videos appear blurry, while others are clear and sharp.
According to Mosseri, the quality of a video on Instagram depends on the number of views it has accumulated. When a video is not watched for a long time, the platform tends to display it in lower quality, since most views occur at the beginning. If a video starts to be watched frequently again, then it returns to higher quality.
Read also: AI can empower social engineering attacks
Mosseri says Instagram aims to showcase the highest quality content and that resources are allocated more to creators who increase their views. Responding to concerns that this approach could hurt smaller creators, he emphasized that users engage more with content, not its quality.
Meta has previously acknowledged that it is struggling to manage the growing volume of videos on the platform. To save computing resources, it prioritizes new uploads through basic encoding, while popular videos receive more sophisticated processing over time.
See also: Russian hackers UNC5812 target Ukrainian soldiers with malware
This strategy results in the most popular creators typically having the best-looking videos, as Meta chooses to invest its resources in content that has high watch time.
Source: theverge
