In an AMA this weekend, Instagram chief Adam Mosseri shared some insight into why some videos on the platform appear lower quality even after they’ve been posted, and it all comes down to performance. Responding to a question about older stories appearing “blurry” in Highlights, Mosseri said, “In general, we want to show the highest quality video.
But if something doesn’t get viewed for a long time — because most views happen in the beginning — we’ll move to a lower quality video.” If the video becomes popular again later, “we’ll re-render the video at a higher quality,” he said in the response, which was re-posted by a Threads user (spotted by The Verge).
However, elaborating further in a follow-up reply, Mosseri said, “We’re biased towards higher quality (more CPU intensive encoding and more expensive storage for larger files) for creators who bring in more views.” The comment has raised concerns from smaller creators, who said it puts them at a disadvantage in competing with others with larger platforms. Meta previously said it uses “different encoding configurations to process videos based on their popularity” as part of managing its computing resources.
Mosseri said the performance system “works on an aggregate level, not an individual viewer level… it’s not a binary threshold, but a sliding scale.” In response to a user who questioned its fairness for smaller creators, Mosseri said the quality change “doesn’t matter much in practice” because it’s “not very big” and viewers care more about the video content than the quality. “Quality seems to matter much more to the original creator, who is more likely to take down a video than their audience if it looks bad,” he said. Obviously, not everyone seems convinced.
Sony has released the first proper look at Until Dawn, the movie adaptation of Supermassive’s choose-your-own-adventure horror game. Rather than offering a teaser or trailer, the company has opted to release more of a vignette, in which the film’s writers and directors explain how their project differs from the game.
As revealed during Sony’s CES 2025 keynote last week, Until Dawn features a new story and different characters from the original work. Director David F. Sandberg (Lights Out, Shazam!) says the film has “the same kind of tone, the same vibe, but it expands the universe.”
In the game, the characters’ fates are determined by your narrative choices, many of which lead to them dying a gruesome death. Sandberg explained that the same will happen here, as things will restart and characters will get a chance to try again after everything is gone. “Every time they come back to life, it’s like they’re in a new horror genre,” the director said. “To survive, they must survive until dawn.”
It’s an interesting attempt to replicate the structure of a video game, in which you can start over if things aren’t going your way. However, this story does make Until Dawn a bit like the very fun Happy Death Day, in which the main character is killed every day but comes back to life until she figures out the identity of the killer.
Until Dawn is set to hit theaters on April 25. Sony says a proper trailer is coming soon. In the meantime, you might like to check out the remake of the game, which arrived on PS5 and PC in October.