On Tuesday, Instagram said it recommends the videos it recommends in the dedicated Reels tab on the home screen, including not regularly uploading videos featuring watermarks or logos from other platforms.
“We’ve heard in research that people have a less satisfying experience when they see content being retrieved from other programs or vaguely and with low resolution. We therefore make this content less detectable in places like the Reels tab,” Devi Narasimhan, a Facebook (FB) spokesman told CNN Business.
Instagram does not mention TikTok by name, but CNN Business reported earlier that it is common to see one TikTok video after another while scrolling through Reels. Some influencers have also admitted that they put their TikToks on Reels.
“It really makes the experience cheaper if people just promote their TikToks with the logo in Reels,” said Ricky Ray Butler, CEO of marketing firm BEN. “Instagram has become a TikTok farm.”
Although these types of videos are not as often recommended in the Rules tab, they will still be shown to users’ followers via their profile or in the feed.
Instagram launched Reels in the United States in August, but the TikTok clone struggled to gain traction. Yet Instagram has doubled the feature, giving Reels its own button on the home screen and adding more tools such as additional editing features.
Social media experts pointed out several reasons why Reels did not come into force, including the cultural impact of TikTok, the powerful content recommendation algorithm and the fact that the app is much more focused than Instagram’s, which is a growing list of competing video offers.
Snapchat, which launched its own spin on TikTok called “Spotlight” last year, does not allow users to upload videos with watermarks from different platforms.