Where is my Instagram post shared?

November 12, 2022 6:47 AM

I have an Instagram account where I post things occasionally for friends and family. In September I posted a reel of a model rocket launch with no tags. It's not a particularly interesting post. Yet, someone must have shared it somewhere somewhat popular as two months later I still get "likes" daily (near 300 now) and there's been more than 17,000 views of the reel. I'm curious on where my post was shared, but I haven't had any luck finding where. Can you?

Things I have done to find where it was shared include:
• Searching for the UUID in the URL of the post.
• Switching my Instagram to a business account so I can check the post's "Insights". Nothing useful there.

If you find it, do let me know how you did so.

posted by ShooBoo to Computers & Internet (8 answers total)

Reels are more like TikToks in that there are lots of folks who just scroll through the Reels section, and all it takes for a Reel to accumulate likes is for the algorithm to decide to show it to people. It may not have been "shared" anywhere other than that.

I have a Reel of a my dog running in my yard from August that continues to accumulate views and likes and is up to 382 likes right now. The most recent like on that Reel is from 5 days ago.
posted by misskaz at 7:11 AM on November 12, 2022 [5 favorites]

I wonder if it just showed up on the “explore” tab for some reason? Ever since they switched all videos to reels, I occasionally have a video that gets a ton of extra attention (relatively speaking - we’re talking 3-4 thousand views when I usually get 100 or fewer).
posted by obfuscation at 7:12 AM on November 12, 2022

It probably wasn't shared, it's just the nature of Reels, which also show on Facebook. I got the same number of views for a video of my cat doing cat things and that was a record for me for views and likes.
posted by fiercekitten at 7:25 AM on November 12, 2022 [1 favorite]

Was it the first reel you shared? I suspect the algorithm juices your first reel by sharing it to more people scrolling in order to encourage you to share more reels.
posted by Xalf at 7:52 AM on November 12, 2022 [2 favorites]

My understanding is that instagram is doing this thing where they are trying to chase TikTok (and previously Snapchat) with Reels. No one likes them. But they are pushing video to be like “oh reels are doing so good! They get so many views!” Because they are making them have views. Again, everyone hates it. But they are giving reels and counting it as “views” because they force it on a page or whatever.

So I agree it likely wasn’t “shared” anywhere but went into the reels section that gets pushed around to strangers and if it had some sort of views or likes or engagement they push it more. And it can show up on peoples regular home tab as a suggested post. (Though it’s much less engagement than TikTok in my experience.)

I have a reel that’s still getting likes too. Dunno why exactly that one “hit”.
posted by Crystalinne at 9:38 AM on November 12, 2022

I don't know if this is it, but I've been wondering where the reels shown on FACEBOOK come from, and thinking that at least some of them come from Instagram, since, y'know, they're owned by the same company now and many of the accounts are connected.

Is it possible for you to follow the usernames behind the likes (or any comments that appear) and see if they go back to Instagram or Facebook accounts? Because not everyone has connected their accounts, and not everyone has the same username on each.

I have a bad habit of getting distracted into at least the first few reels that Facebook shows me thumbnails of, almost entirely when it looks like a cute dog or cat thing... it's just right there in my feed. It's pretty rare that I'll click through further, though... but I'm sure other people fall down that rabbit hole, too.
posted by stormyteal at 11:07 AM on November 12, 2022

OK, I just went and deliberately looked at the reels that appeared on my Facebook feed. There doesn't appear any way to search for that "section" on Facebook, or to search through the available reels. Some say "Public" at the top, those click through (as far as I've found) to Facebook accounts. Some say "Instagram" at the top, those click through to Instagram accounts.

So why, or where initially, is probably something that Facebook/Instagram/Meta did, and now you're getting views and likes from people whose algorithm decided they liked rocket videos.

And here's some more info.
Why Instagram reels may be recommended on Facebook
Share Instagram reels to Facebook
Reels

I don't have time right now to explore further, to see if there's info out there about how to encourage it to get picked up - but I'm reasonably certain that people have explored that idea, lol.
posted by stormyteal at 11:22 AM on November 12, 2022

I agree that it was likely simply suggested as a reel to Instagram users and lots of people saw it! I had a reel once that was nice but felt quite unremarkable to me but that got 6000 views in maybe 48 hours. So are the algorithms these days, eh?! Hashtags and tags feel less important these days because they photo and video content is being analyzed and promoted by machines; few people are looking up hashtags any more or so I seem to believe.
posted by smorgasbord at 7:34 PM on November 12, 2022