Facebook upgraded their video compression technology from VP9 to AV1 which increases more than 30% than the other competing codec based on Alliance for Open Media.
AV1 or AOMedia Video 1 codec is a new open and royalty-free video format that helps more high resolution, lessens the bit rate of video transmissions and is advanced compare to the other codec. The engineers of Facebook conducted a test of this codec and confirmed that AV1 will likely deliver even higher efficiency gains with UHD/ 4K and 8K content. It speeds up the streaming of all Facebook users in live streaming, video streaming, and video uploading.
Some tech giants are also showing interest for supporting AV1 codec, such as Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Twitch, Hulu, and etc.