Instagram Sees Your Recycled Content—And They Don’t Like It
Nearly every social media platform has a “Story” feature that requires the user to creatively piece video and photo clips together, sometimes using music as background noise. Nearly all of them follow in the footsteps of TikTok, the new kid on the block who made this type of content sharing popular last year. It’s common for creators to use multiple social media platforms at once, and sometimes, for different purposes.
As Snapchat Spotlight, Twitter Fleets, LinkedIn Stories, and more started to materialize, it became clear that creating original content for each platform would be laborious so recycling became the new norm. If you’re an Instagram user, you’ve definitely seen Reels with a TikTok watermark. Well, Instagram sees them too and they’re doing something about it.
In a post to the Creators Instagram account (how on-brand of them) earlier this week, the platform made a subtle but very important announcement in the midst of best practices for the Reels tab.
“We’ve learned a lot by surveying our community, and seeing how people interact with recommended reels. People tell us they want to see entertaining, funny, and interesting content in places like the Reels tab, and we’ve gotten better at recommending that,” they started off.
“We’ve also heard that low video quality reels (i.e. blurry due to low resolution) or content that is visibly recycled from other apps (i.e. contains logos or watermarks) makes the Reels experience less satisfying. So, we’re making this content less discoverable in places like the Reels tab.”
So while creating one video for multiple platforms probably makes life a whole lot easier, it may not be the smartest move if your main focus is Instagram. This isn’t the most official-looking announcement from Instagram (most are usually shared on the Instagram Official Blog) but I would certainly take their word for it, even as we await more details.
On the upside, if you’re not using Instagram as a platform for your creative work, you’ll encounter less blurry content while scrolling the Reels tab.
Subscribe to the BlogHer newsletter for more tactical advice, exclusive content, and timely event updates.