Instagram’s updated algorithm prioritizes original content over scams

Instagram is making significant changes to the way its system recommends content, with a focus on original content and greater distribution to smaller accounts. The series of changes were announced by the company in a blog post today.

The biggest change concerns aggregators – accounts that download or capture videos and photos from other users and repost them. Sometimes aggregators will give credit to the original poster by tagging them in the post or in the caption, but often, content is stolen en masse without any recognition, and engagement is diverted away from the person who created the content in the first place.

Instagram clearly has a problem with this and will begin removing reposted content from recommendations across the platform. The update targets serial reposters – accounts that share content they have not “created or materially enhanced” more than 10 times in 30 days. This means that, in theory, your Instagram Explore page or main feed recommendations won’t include content from aggregation accounts. Affected accounts may become eligible again for recommendations 30 days after the last time they reposted “non-original” content. This will not affect “a set of publishers” identified by Instagram with licensing agreements or content creator sharing permissions, according to the blog post.

Instagram is going a step further than just cutting out reposting accounts: the platform will replace reposted content with the creator’s original post in recommendations. The company says it will only replace reposts when the original is “relatively new” and when the system is confident that the posts are identical “based on audio and visual cues.” Creators will receive a notification when their original content replaces reposts and is recommended on the platform. These changes only apply to recommendations – if you follow an aggregation account, you’ll still see content reposted on your profile or in feeds.

Instagram will also begin adding a label giving credit to the original creator — although both the original creator and the account reposting the photo or video can remove the label.

The penalization of aggregator accounts will likely be far-reaching, in addition to content mill-type accounts that steal memes or images. Individuals who regularly post infographics from organizations can be harmed, as can things like celebrity fan pages or accounts that collect inspirational photos from various sources on Instagram. Reposting on Instagram is such a common practice that there are entire apps dedicated to it – but users may think twice in the future, knowing that it could block their account discovery features.

Instagram also announced today that its recommendation system will be updated “to give all creators equal opportunities for advancement” through a new ranking algorithm.

“Previously, on platforms with recommended content, Reels were ranked primarily based on how an account’s followers interacted with them,” the company wrote in the blog post. “This meant that the accounts with the largest number of followers generally had the greatest reach.”

To counteract this and give equal opportunities to smaller accounts, Instagram outlines a system that essentially sounds like a series of beta tests that all eligible content will go through: the recommendation system will show a piece of content to a small audience that might be interested. in this, whether they follow the creator or not. The best-performing Moments in that group will then be broadcast to a wider audience, where the process will be repeated. It will be interesting to see if this can create the “anyone can go viral” phenomenon on Instagram — in other words, part of what made TikTok so attractive to aspiring influencers.

Instagram says this change will be implemented in the coming months.

Reach and engagement on Instagram has been a controversial topic for years as Meta leans more on Reels and recommendations – the onslaught of content you see from accounts you don’t follow. On Threads, Instagram boss Adam Mosseri can be seen regularly trying for explain for frustrated creators how Instagram ranks and serves content or why so few followers see what they post. However, these updates do not specifically target this issue – in fact, the emphasis on recommendation updates seems to suggest that this will be even more important in the future.