By John Ikani
Tech giant, Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, is set to launch a new verification service that will allow its customers to verify their social media accounts.
The announcement was made by Meta Co-founder, Mark Zuckerberg, via a Facebook post on Sunday.
The new service, known as, ‘Meta Verified,’ will allow customers to verify their accounts using government-verified identity cards, and will also provide them with impersonation protection from fake accounts and direct access to customer support.
Meta has stated that the new service, which aims to increase authenticity and security across its services, will be available for a fee, starting at $11.99 per month on the web or $14.99 per month on iOS.
The service will be launched in Australia and New Zealand this week, with plans to expand to other countries in the near future.
The introduction of paid verification subscriptions is not a new phenomenon in the tech industry.
Elon Musk, the billionaire CEO of SpaceX and Tesla, made verification badges purchasable for his official Twitter account in October 2022.
Musk’s standard blue and gold tick verification badges were made available to individual accounts that paid for the Twitter subscription while the gold verification badge was reserved for official business accounts.
