Meta-owned Instagram is spending millions of dollars in an effort to overtake its Chinese rival TikTok. Many updates caused an outrage among users, including the most famous people of the planet. They were shocked at where the social network was going. However, despite all efforts, Instagram has still not caught up with its rival TikTok, reports The Verge.

The Wall Street Journal has obtained an internal document from the company Meta, which talks about Instagram’s attempts to court creators, because the involvement of Reels drops. If TikTok users spend 197.8 million hours every day, then almost identical Reels on Instagram get just 17.6 million. That is, according to a document called “Creators x Reels State of the Union 2022” compared to TikTok users spend in Reels less than one-tenth of the time. A report published in August indicated that Reels’ engagement had dropped 13.6% in the past month, and “most Reels users have no engagement whatsoever.”

In a document obtained by The Wall Street Journal, it is noted that the main problem Instagram – lack of original content. The fact is that almost a third of the videos have a watermark or something else that makes it appear that they were made on another social network. Remade TikTok videos were causing damage to Reels for a while until Instagram announced it will downgrade reposted videos in recommendations.

To encourage users to create original content for Instagram and Facebook, the company Meta has allocated $1 billion to pay creators until the end of the year. Now the creators of Reels received a total of $120 million. However, Meta spokesperson Devi Narasimhan called the data from the report outdated and not global. He believes that the data represents a “snapshot”.

“We still have work to do, but creators and businesses are seeing promising results and our monetization growth is faster than we expected as more people are watching, creating and connecting through Reels than ever before,” says Narasimhan.

Reels’ revenue is growing every month overall, and the $120 million figure is outdated and misleading, says a Meta spokesperson. However, he declined to share updated numbers or provide more context.