Meta, owner of Facebook and Instagram, will launch a paid account verification service on these two social networks, with a price starting at around 11 euros per month. The new service will first be tested in Australia and New Zealand and then launched in other countries.
The announcement was made this weekend by Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook and executive president of Meta. “Good morning and a new product announcement: this week, we’re starting to test Meta Verified – a subscription service that allows you to verify your account with a government ID, get a blue seal, get extra protection against fake accounts and have direct access to consumer support”, described the person in charge, in a publication on Facebook, this Sunday.
The new service, he added, is intended to “increase the authenticity and security” of the services provided by Facebook and Instagram, with a price that will vary depending on the device on which the social networks are used. “Meta Verified starts at $11.99 per month [cerca de 11,20 euros] for the web or $14.99 per month [14 euros] on iOS [sistema operativo do iPhone]. We’re launching this service in Australia and New Zealand this week, with more countries coming soon.”
To access this new service, a Meta spokesperson later explained, Facebook and Instagram users will have to be over 18 years old, meet minimum account activity requirements and submit government-issued identification that matches the name and photo displayed on your accounts. In addition, the new service will only be available to people, with companies excluded.
The announcement of the new paid service comes a few months after Meta announced that it will lay off 13% of its workforce, in what was yet another major technology company to enter the wave of redundancies experienced in the sector, which includes companies like Twitter or Microsoft. In November last year, the owner of Facebook announced that it would lay off more than 11 thousand workers, a decision that the company justified with the increase in costs, in a context of falling advertising revenues.
“Not only trade online returned to previous trends, but the macro-economic slowdown, increased competition and the loss of strength of advertising meant that our revenue was much lower than expected”, said, at the time, Mark Zuckerberg, in a message sent to workers.
Even so, Meta closed the year 2022 with revenues of more than 116.6 billion dollars (about 109 billion euros), a drop of just 1% compared to the previous year, and a net result of 23. 3 billion dollars (21.7 billion euros), a drop of 41% compared to 2021.
The decision to create a paid verification service also comes after Twitter did the same. At the end of last year, the company led by Elon Musk launched this same feature at a cost of $7.99 per month. Unlike Elon Musk, who has already expressed his intention to remove the blue verification seal obtained by users before the launch of this paid service, Meta guarantees, for now, that it will not make any changes to already verified accounts.