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Following Twitter Blue’s paid verification badge saga, Meta is also introducing ‘Meta Verified’, an $11.99/month subscription for the web (or $14.99 if you’re on mobile) that’ll grant Facebook and Instagram users a verification badge in addition to increasing visibility on the platforms and prioritised customer support among other exclusive features. The feature is currently rolling out in Australia and New Zealand and will be coming to more countries soon.
The service launches later this week in Australia and New Zealand, starting at $19.99 AUD and $24.99 AUD on the web or mobile, respectively. New Zealand pricing is slightly higher at $23.99 NZD and $29.99 NZD for the web or mobile, respectively. The higher cost on mobile is most likely to offset the commission both Apple and Google charge developers for selling app subscriptions on their respective app stores.
In addition to the aforementioned perks, subscribers will get exclusive stickers for stories and reels and 100 free stars a month — the digital currency used to tip creators on Facebook. The company also promises better protection from impersonators on the platform.
The restrictions for entering the program are also relatively relaxed. You need to be 18 or older and need to submit a government ID that matches your account’s photo and name with the corresponding platform.
That said, once verified, users can’t change their profile name, username, birthday or picture without going through the verification again. Meta also claimed that it won’t be making any changes to accounts already verified using previous requirements including authenticity and prominence. Finally, the subscription service isn’t open for businesses yet.
There are a lot of parallels between Meta’s new verification subscription and the Twitter equivalent, which got off to a rocky start only recently with Elon Musk at the helm of the company. That said, Meta does seem to be taking account authentication a bit more seriously as the process requires submitting government IDs, something Twitter scrapped when it moved to the new Twitter Blue.
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