Amidst declining popularity among the younger demographic, a shrinking user base, the impact of new Apple privacy options on its advertising business, and negative press, Meta has been aggressively promoting videos to its users. Introducing Reels, a shameless imitation of TikTok that hasn’t quite won the hearts of its audience, but Mark Zuckerberg remains determined since their launch on Instagram in August 2020 and on Facebook in September 2021. Here we go again, embracing the pivot to video! Recode’s recent earnings call with the CEO revealed that he mentioned Reels at least twenty times and firmly believes that “not holding on the brakes at all” is the right approach.
In an exclusive analysis by the think tank, the Integrity Institute, Recode’s Shirin Ghaffary shares the report highlighting that Reels constitute more than half of the 20 most-viewed posts on Facebook in the U.S. for the last quarter. Undeniably, that’s an impressive number of high-performing videos. However, it remains uncertain whether Reels’ success is due to genuinely good and engaging content or simply Meta’s persistent promotion of videos on its platforms.
BUT ARE THEY ACTUALLY GOOD? — A significant majority of the most-viewed Reels were reposts from anonymous accounts that didn’t appear to be the original creators. Instead, these accounts merely aggregated videos from TikTok and other platforms.
As a whole, 73 percent of the top 20 most-viewed Reels were posted from anonymous accounts, and approximately 82 percent came from accounts with a history of reposting content from other creators. So, while Reels are indeed getting plenty of views, Meta isn’t necessarily motivating creators to produce original content; rather, traction seems to be gained by simply bombarding the platform with reposts.
Meta has made efforts to encourage original content by deprioritizing videos featuring the TikTok logo. Despite these policies, two of the top eleven most-shared Reels were originally posted on TikTok.
