If there is one thing about social media, it doesn’t encourage original content.
Quite the opposite, actually, as the proliferation of the same thing in a different format not only gets attention but also it makes money.
Instagram is going to try to put a stop to that, Engadget reports, with some tweaks that will favor original content rather than aggregation or re-packaging of content.
From the company’s blog:
“We have been working on a new way to rank recommendations to give all creators an equal chance of breaking through. Through this process, every piece of eligible content (e.g., content that is original, does not violate our community guidelines, has no visible watermarks and satisfies our recommendation guidelines) is shown to a small audience that we think will enjoy it, regardless of whether they follow the account that posted it or not. As this audience engages with the content, the top performing set of reels are shown to a slightly wider audience, then the best of these are shown to an even wider group, and so on. We’ll roll this out over the coming months.”
This touches on the larger theme of getting content recognized on the service in general. Many people remember the halcyon days in Instagram’s infancy when it was about food pics and following your friends. Now many of us never see anything they post unless it meets a certain range of mysterious criteria. At least eliminating the waves of redundancy in what we are shown will help mitigate the lack of organic interaction with people you actually know.
Engadget reports that aggregation accounts will be punished if they post content detected elsewhere more than 10 times. In addition, Instagram will actually suggest the real, original content for you to view. This last part is particularly crucial since it can be nearly impossible to find anything via Instagram’s own search. And as anyone that uses anything online can tell you, when you have to start digging and digging to find something, the chances of most people doing this are slim to none.
Any thoughts that you might have on the proliferation of “more of the same” on social media are welcome in the comments.
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