Following the suit of his fellow tech-made billionaire, Elon Musk - Mark Zuckerberg has announced that paid verification is making its way to Meta-owned platforms Facebook and Instagram.
Zuck announced the new paid subscription service, which will be called Meta Verified and will give verified badges to paying users verified by Facebook or Instagram.
“Good morning and new product announcement: this week, we’re starting to roll out Meta Verified, a subscription service that lets you verify your account with a government ID, get a blue badge, get extra impersonation protection against accounts claiming to be you, and get direct access to customer support," Zuckerberg said in a post.
The new service is expected to cost $11.99 for web users or $14.99 on iOS, about R215 and R270 when converted to today's currency exchange rate. It will launch next week in Australia and New Zealand and more countries soon.
The blue verification badge will serve as an authenticator for users of Facebook or Instagram. It will also assist in avoiding impersonators who might try to steal the online identities of other users.
Facebook previously announced that for users to have a verified account, users would have to submit a government ID and prove their identity with this. The new Meta Verified subscription service has cemented this requirement.
This is meant to cut down on the number of fake accounts and bots on the platform, which many users have complained about for years. Meanwhile, Facebook also said it would actively monitor for fake accounts that might spring up in response to this change.
The blue tick is typically reserved for celebrities, brands, athletes, and profiles reasonably well-known to the general public.
The sought-after verification badge is associated with social media clout - or at least it was in the past - and is seen across other platforms from Meta, such as Facebook and Instagram.
Most recently, Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok expanded their verification options to include user verification. Before this, Twitter had been one of the only social media platforms that enabled users to apply for a verification badge, especially when they might need to be more well-known to the public.
However, Twitter still allows users to apply for a verification badge while concurrently offering the option to pay for it through Twitter Blue.
Despite this, the guidelines for qualifying Twitter accounts are very stringent and, in many cases, may require more than a single application for successful verification.
IOL Tech