In general, we want to show the highest quality video we can when someone is watching a Story or Reel [...] But if something isn't watched for a long time, because the vast majority of views are in the beginning [after initial posting], we will move to a lower quality video, and then if it's watched again a lot, then we'll re-render the higher quality video.
Smaller creators historically haven't gotten their fair share of reach on Instagram, and we want to change that. So we're making some changes to how we rank recommendations to give smaller creators a better chance of breaking through.
In practice it doesn't seem to matter much, as the quality shift isn't huge, and whether or not people interact with videos is way more based on the content of the video than the quality.
Quality seems to be much more important to the original creator, who is more likely to delete the video if it looks poor, than to their viewers.
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