The year is 2025 and the world is placed in the middle of a war between platforms. The main reasons for this? Attention, retention, and creation. Over the years, we saw how Instagram dominated the social media market and how it basically became the “official” badge to determine if a person could be considered an Influencer or even a Content Creator. But, so much has changed through these last years, especially the rules of the content game.

As a strategy to keep people on the platform and value Creators, Instagram announced that they will update their ranking algorithm to benefit original content. 

While this might seem to be exciting news, no details have yet been released about what in fact these updates will be, how or when we can expect any change. It’s unclear if, by “original content”, Instagram is referring to rewarding creators for originality, or to encourage the creation of more Instagram-exclusive content. 

But we have some guesses about how this new update may affect marketers and content creation on the social platform. Let’s dig into that. 

A war over short videos

After the COVID-19 pandemic, brands realized that, in order to keep users consuming their content, it was necessary not only to have a practical interface and create good content, but to do that in an original way that catches and maintains the attention of the audience (and they also saw that one of the best ways of doing that was working alongside creators), in order to win over the increasing number of people consuming short videos for quick entertainment. 

With this in mind, we were presented with the two brands that are the protagonists of this platform war: Instagram and TikTok.

TikTok became a huge success not only for the short video format, but also for the dynamic ways it provides to create content with reactions and collabs, and for being well aligned with the music industry.

But even with all that, Instagram still was the place to be recognized as an influencer, so the most practical thing to do was to create content with all the tools from TikTok and repost the content on Instagram. And what did Instagram do to avoid that? Limiting the organic reach of videos with watermarks from other platforms. It didn’t work out very well.

Instagram’s attempt to push back against recycled videos didn’t really land—if anything, there was a sort of collective shrug and people just kept on sharing what worked. You have to laugh a bit at how transparent some of these strategies were: a quick tweak to the algorithm here, a warning on watermarks there, but none of it convinced creators to change their routines. The real kicker is, many users didn’t even notice the difference unless their engagement tanked, and by then, most had already started splitting their attention between platforms.

At the same time, creators found themselves juggling which features gave them the most mileage. It wasn’t just about cross-posting for convenience—it became this sort of low-effort insurance, just in case one algorithm swung unpredictable. Some would swear by TikTok’s speed while quietly hedging their bets by nurturing their Instagram audience, hoping at least one platform wouldn’t leave them ghosted come the next update. It made things a touch stressful, but also kind of addictive. The uncertainty kept everyone on their toes, maybe a bit paranoid, but that’s the cost of survival in creator-land.

As TikTok was becoming more and more popular as time passed, Instagram decided to take another step to keep users inside the platform. It shut down IGTV. The results from that? Not much, actually.

There’s also this undercurrent of fatigue—watching platforms mimic one another so aggressively, it’s almost like déjà vu every time a new feature rolls out. The crowd notices, but rarely celebrates. Instead, people get this vague sense of being lab rats targeted with slightly shinier pellets. And while the execs chase the next increment of engagement, everyday users just want a space that feels genuine, a place where their posts mean something, not just content fodder for algorithms obsessed with keeping them scrolling. Oddly, the chaos sometimes brings out the best and worst in both communities and creators.

While everyone was busy debating the future of short video, smaller features were rolling out in the background—minor UI tweaks and silent A/B tests, barely noticed unless you’re in the weeds of app updates. The arms race wasn’t just about flashy new tools but tiny nudges to see what stuck. If you ask most marketers, they’ll tell you the only constant was change (and the nagging fear your favorite tactic will suddenly stop working, seemingly overnight).

But throughout the last year, we saw Instagram attempting to become “more TikTok”, even claiming that it was no longer a photo-sharing app. 

But what do all those actions have in common? None of them are really focused on the content creators nor their experience with the platform. It was basically just doing what the competitor does and using the brand name to stay on top. But we’re not in 2018 and this strategy doesn’t work anymore.

It took almost 2 years for the brand to realize that creators are just like customers and brand promoters. If they don’t feel comfortable or if they don’t feel respected for their work, they will just leave for another platform. Finally understanding this, Instagram updated its algorithm to favor original content.

Originality is key

What can we, as marketers and content creators, expect from that? Well, we can say that it is a small step for Instagram but a huge step for the market. As per Head of Instagram Adam Mosseri: “If you create something from scratch, you should get more credit than if you are resharing something that you found from someone else. we’re going to do more to try and value original content more, particularly compared to reposted content.”

📣 New Features 📣

We’ve added new ways to tag and improved ranking:

– Product Tags
– Enhanced Tags
– Ranking for originality

Creators are so important to the future of Instagram, and we want to make sure that they are successful and get all the credit they deserve. pic.twitter.com/PP7Qa10oJr

— Adam Mosseri (@mosseri) April 20, 2022

That doesn’t mean content which was edited outside the platform before being published will be penalized, according to Mosseri, “The idea is if you made it, it’s original.” And this is also a good thermometer to see if the majority of videos are edited outside the platform, it means that Instagram’s edit tools must be improved, so we can expect some future announcements related to this new algorithm update.

For now, let’s wait for what will really change on Instagram in the near future. If the social channel is really trying to create an engaged creators community, valuing their work is a good way to start. 

Don’t forget that this update can also harm a lot of accounts that have their strategies based only on User-Generated Content, especially if their followers are also posting the same content on their profiles. But we’ll have to wait for future tests and tools to have an answer.