Meta trial payment verification for Instagram and Facebook for $11.99 per month on web and $14.99 per month on mobile. In an update on instagram, CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that a “Meta Verified” account will give users a verified badge, increased visibility across platforms, prioritized customer support, and more. The feature will roll out to Australia and New Zealand this week, with more countries coming “soon”.
“This week we started rolling out Meta Verified, a subscription service that lets you verify your account with a government ID, get a blue badge, get extra phishing protection against accounts claiming to be you, and get direct access to customer service. ”Zuckerberg writes. “This new feature is about increasing authenticity and security across all of our services.”
To sign up to become Meta Verified, you’ll need to meet the minimum activity requirements, be at least 18 years of age, and submit a government ID that matches your name and photo on Facebook or Instagram. The new offer looks a lot like Elon Musk’s $8-per-month version of Twitter Blue, but Meta notes that it won’t make any changes to accounts that have been verified using the company’s previous requirements, including notability and authenticity. .
In addition, users who sign up for the service will get exclusive stickers for Stories and Reels, and will also receive 100 free stars per month, or digital currency that you can use to tip creators on Facebook. Meta notes that businesses can’t yet apply for a Meta Verified badge and that you can’t change your profile name, username, birthday, or profile photo without going through the verification process again.
“In the long term, we want to create a subscription offer that is valuable to everyone, including creators, businesses, and our community at large,” Meta write in a blog post. “As part of this vision, we are evolving what the verified badge means so that we can broaden access to verification and more people can trust that the accounts they interact with are authentic.”
When the service launches in Australia and New Zealand this week, it will cost $19.99 AUD on web and $24.99 AUD on mobile, or $23.99 NZD on web and $29.99 NZD on mobile. The higher cost on iOS and Android is likely a way to offset the fee Apple and Google charge for in-app purchases.
Rumors about the service first surfaced earlier this month when a report from TechCrunch shared references to paid verification in the Instagram source code. Social Media Consultant Matt Navarra posted later what appears to be a support page for paid verification on the Australian or New Zealand based version of Instagram.
That said, it’s hard to ignore the parallels between Meta’s new checkmark subscription and Twitter Blue, which Musk just relaunched a few months ago. However, it appears that Meta is taking account authenticity a bit more seriously, as it still requires users to submit government IDs (as Twitter’s old verification process did) and supposedly offers additional safeguards against fake accounts. , though we still don’t know what those are. Let’s hope it doesn’t cause the spate of fake verified accounts we saw on Twitter last year.
Update February 19, 3:15 pm ET: Updated to add a quote from a Meta blog post.
