Welcome to another episode of Creator Daily - I'm your host Michael, covering the top news stories, latest strategies, and emerging trends in the overall creator landscape. Today, we'll dive into Instagram's latest update where the original content shines over copied material. We'll also discuss the staffing challenges X is facing with its moderation team compared to its peers. Plus, we're breaking down TikTok's new report on the expansion of TikTok Shops, and we'll explore how TikTok is cleverly bypassing those hefty App Store commissions. Stick around for all this and more, right here on Creator Daily!


Instagram is rolling out a new algorithm tweak that will shake up the way content is recommended to users. The platform is cracking down on aggregator accounts—these are the accounts that repost content from other creators without creating or enhancing it significantly. The change means that if an aggregator account reposts content more than ten times in a thirty-day period without materially adding to it, they'll be removed from Instagram's recommendations.
But here's the interesting bit: Instagram will be replacing these reposts with the original creator's post in recommendation spaces, giving credit to where it's due. However, this only happens if the original content is fairly new and the system is sure both posts are identical. Also, creators will even get notified when their post replaces a repost in recommendations.
To support smaller creators, Instagram is changing up the recommendation system. It'll test content with a small audience first and if it performs well, it'll show it to more users, regardless of how big the original creator's following is. This gives every creator an equal shot at going viral, similar to TikTok's appeal.
These updates are part of Instagram's broader shift towards prioritizing Reels and other recommended content, which has been a topic of discussion among creators who fear their content isn't reaching their followers. Instagram hopes these changes will level the playing field and give more attention to original content. The rollout is expected to happen over the next few months, so creators and users alike should keep their eyes peeled for these changes.


Recent European Union transparency reports reveal that the social media platform X now has significantly fewer moderation staff compared to other social media networks. This is following a massive reduction in staff, where X cut about 80% of its employees in 2022. The reports provided by the E.U. under the Digital Services Act allow for comparisons in terms of the ratio between moderation staff and users for each major social app. X is at the bottom with one moderator for every 60,249 users. For context, LinkedIn has a ratio of 1 to 41,652, TikTok is at 1 to 22,586, and Meta, which includes both Instagram and Facebook, has a ratio of 1 to 17,600.
However, these figures aren't entirely straightforward. For instance, Meta's number might effectively be doubled since the reported 15,000 content reviewers work across both Facebook and Instagram, each with 260 million E.U. users. Still, even with that adjustment, Meta's ratio would be more favorable than X's. Also, unlike other platforms, X's user count includes logged-out guests, but their ability to view content is less than logged-in users on other platforms, so this may not be a significant factor. Moreover, it's not entirely clear how many moderators are designated for E.U. concerns for each platform.
Examining X's overall global user base, the moderation workforce to user ratio becomes one moderator for every 297,458 users, if all 1,849 moderators are taken into account. In comparison, even with all of Meta's reported 3 billion users, the ratio remains 1 to 200,000, without including the additional 25,000 people tasked with safety and security.
This marked reduction in manual moderation at X has concerned various online...