“Meta Verified” arrives for $11.99 and $14.99 per month

If you’re a photographer who promotes your work on Facebook or Instagram, Meta has a “deal” for you.

The social media giant has now rolled out its Meta Verified program for users who want to get a blue tick for their profiles and gain access to better account features.

Oddly, the idea seems to have come from Elon Musk’s efforts at putting a subscription-priced blue check option for Twitter users who want to get verified.

While Musk was heavily criticized for implementing this in late 2022, not only has Meta now copied it, they even imitate the same symbol, but at a slightly higher monthly price.

In any case, Facebook/Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg announced this monthly subscription option for Instagram and Facebook last month. According to his original announcement, program trials would roll out in Australia and New Zealand.

Now that these were shown to apparently be successful, the paid blue tick option is coming to the United States and other regions.

For the time being, however, users who want to sign up still need to join a waitlist.

According to Meta, its Meta Verified program is aimed at making both Instagram and Facebook safer for users who want to see trustworthy social media accounts for their favorite brands, influences, celebrities and organizations.

The accounts who want to pass through the extra verification required by the new Meta Verified program will need to prove their authenticity with ID and other steps.  

As a result, they’ll obtain better customer support access in the case of account freezes and better options for account promotion.

For the billions of individual and business accounts on both Facebook and Instagram, gaining access to genuine human technical support (or even half-functional automated tech support) is nearly impossible so far.

This has applied in numerous cases even for accounts with enormous follower counts and lots of presence on the two platforms.

Given Meta’s enormous, multibillion-dollar annual revenues and profits, you’d think they could have long since invested in a process for helping users; apparently, the only hurdle was the revenue gained from an $11.99 subscription fee.

Becoming Meta Verified means uploading a government-issued ID with a photo and activating two-factor ID. Users who do these things and pay their monthly fee get their blue tick, exclusive stickers for stories and reels and 100 “stars” (Facebook’s streaming video currency) per month.

Image credit: Meta

On the other hand, Meta Verified users won’t be able to change their account username, real name,  photo, or date of Birth without verifying again.

This is worth keeping in mind for creators who do like changing these things often on their Instagram and Facebook accounts.

Meta hasn’t given specific details about how successful its Meta Verified program was in Australia and New Zealand. That they’re unrolling it in the U.S. now doesn’t really reveal much either.

After all, this is a company that’s famous for doubling down on unpopular and sometimes dysfunctional new “features”.

Users who gain access to Meta Verified can subscribe for the desktop version at $11.99 per month or obtain the mobile and web version for $14.99. It’s unclear why these two are priced differently since it’s doubtful that one costs Meta more than the other to run.

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