In a recent exchange on Threads, Instagram boss Adam Mosseri confirmed that the platform downgrades the video quality of older content in certain scenarios. “If something isn’t watched for a long time, because the vast majority of views are in the beginning, we will move to a lower quality video,” Mosseri explained.
YouTube videos degrade in quality over time too, as they reencode from one codec du jour to the next.
Heck, even Google drive pulled that stunt where they stopped storing photos in original resolution.
Point being, none of these companies exist primarily to archive your content - they exist to monetise it.
If you want to safeguard your content in original quality, then you need to either put it on a cloud storage that you are PAYING for, or keep it on your own hardware (and with backups)
Also, any and all data uploaded to a cloud storage service should be encrypted. Some cloud providers are more trustworthy than others, but do you really want there to be any chance they could view or modify your data?
Nobody cares, I’m sure somebody whined but nobody really cares
You’d be surprised.
I’m sure there are plenty of people out there who use their Instagram or Facebook as basically the history of their social lives, where all their memories are, the local copies long gone.
It’s a terrible idea, but I’m certain people are doing it.
