Illustration by Samar Haddad / The Verge
Whenever I get a new phone and eventually install Instagram, the first thing I do is dig through the app’s settings menu for a toggle that reads “Upload at highest quality.” According to the app, when enabled, this ensures you’ll “Always upload the highest quality photos and videos, even if uploading takes longer. When this is off, we’ll automatically adjust upload quality to fit network conditions.”
But here’s the weird part: by default, this setting is switched off. Aren’t we in the 5G era? Isn’t this the social media platform where people obsess over presenting themselves in the best possible light? Why would the highest-quality uploads be an opt-in feature in 2023? And how come they buried this several layers deep in settings?…