Meta Verified ⇥ facebook.com

Mark Zuckerberg:

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. This new feature is about increasing authenticity and security across our services. Meta Verified starts at $11.99 / month on web or $14.99 / month on iOS. We’ll be rolling out in Australia and New Zealand this week and more countries soon.

I reposted that in full because Facebook’s temperamental login wall may prevent you from seeing it, as it has for me for most of Zuckerberg’s posts.

This product was announced early on a Sunday morning, a few hours after Matt Navarra published screenshots. Perhaps Navarra forced Meta to tip its hand earlier than it expected.

I have many questions, though there is one thing I would like to highlight off the top: like Twitter Blue, Meta Verified costs more on iOS — $15 per month, compared to $12 if you subscribe on the web.1 This — alongside YouTube Premium — seems to me like high-profile highlighting of App Store commissions.

  1. I do not know if many people are eager to pay $180 per year — it sounds more appealing to organizations — but that is not the point. ↥︎