The social network Instagram will implement some changes for content creators, seeking to “make sure credit goes to those who deserve it.” The implicit plot, however, reveals something else: TikTok, for now, wins the battle of social networks and Instagram begs its users, through threats, not to republish the videos of the Chinese app in their feed.
“We’re going to try to do more to try to value original content more, particularly compared to content that’s been republished,” Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri said in a video posted Wednesday . TikTok content posted on Instagram will be buried in the back of the algorithm , and a voice can also be heard pleading, “please create content on our social network.”
As detailed by Mosseri, now the tags have been expanded so that anyone can tag products in their posts and even have their own category. This way, when you see a profile tag in a post or story, it will show the username and below its category, such as “Photographer”, “Model” or “Writer”. “If you create something from scratch, you should get more credit than if you reshare something you found from someone else,” she said.
Reels or short videos are a fundamental part of the development of Instagram and Facebook. The battle with TikTok is long overdue. In fact, the original idea that is now all the rage came from the Chinese app owned by ByteDance, and the now called Meta applied them first on Instagram and later on Facebook. They were not the only social networks that did it, Reddit and Snapchat also copied them. The reality is that what works is applied by everyone, and TikTok is not left out of this practice.
Many of the videos that are successful on Instagram are recycled or reposted from TikTok, where they were even more successful and had more reach. The Chinese app is number one in downloads and surpassed all other social networks. Seeing a good reel is almost synonymous with thinking about how good TikTok is. Then comes the subtle threat of Instagram: all content from other networks (read: mainly the Chinese app) will be buried at the bottom of the feed. And so those videos will not have any kind of success, discouraging recycling and encouraging original Instagram content.