Compression

When it comes to social media, compression is about reducing the file size of multimedia content. This includes images, videos, and audio files. Why do platforms like Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and Twitter compress those files?

They want faster loading times, less data usage, and overall better performance. And what about us as users? Well, we might not notice that stuff so much as long as everything runs smoothly on our end, but we could definitely tell if our internet was being laggy, our images were pixelated, or our audio was cutting out.

That’s where compression comes in. Now, the interesting part is that compression works best when the file has something to give up in terms of quality. But if we're artists, influencers, or just regular users trying to express ourselves online, we're very much in the business of creating high-quality content.

So there's a bit of a paradox here. Compression can help us share our content across the social world without too much hassle. But if we allow the compression to do its thing too much, the resulting perceived loss in quality might be more of a problem for our user engagement than just the basic algorithmic issues that necessitate compression in the first place.