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I’m very curious how successful Instagram Reels is ever since they began their hard push of it. It’s never in the news but from my perspective engagement seems to be doing pretty well, and has much tighter e-commerce integration compared to TikTok too.

Makes me wonder if TikTok is paying its biggest influencers to not post there.

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In my experience, something like 90% of content on Instagram Reels is not originally created there. The recommendation engine (accessed via the search page) is almost exclusively bot accounts that steal and repost low-effort attention-grabbing content from other socials. Even the original content direct from creators usually has the TikTok watermark on it since it was originally created and posted there. In my experience as a casual Instagram surfer, it is wholly terrible compared to tiktok.

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