Getting social media users to pay for verification is a great idea that works flawlessly all the time, right? Right?
Yeah, no. Paid verification was one of the most-hated elements of Elon Musk‘s Twitter takeover. It gutted Twitter’s original verification system, which gave checkmarks to people like politicians, celebrities, scientists and research institutions, and other recognized public figures. A checkmark meant the account was, in fact, owned and operated by the person it claimed to represent, so users could trust that tweets came straight from the source.
Musk’s new system, by contrast, allowed anyone to pay for a checkmark. Since every Betsy, Bob, and Joe with a phone number was able to pay for a checkmark to look official, the marks lost their meaning, and misinformation ran rampant.
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Meta apparently took one look at that mess and thought, You know what? We should do that too.
It launched Meta Verified in March 2023, and admittedly did take security one step further than X, requiring users to send in a photo ID in order to get their checkmarks. But the base idea was still the same: Want to let followers know that you’re really you? Better fork over twelve bucks a month.
People who paid that fee got a checkmark, “proactive account protection from impersonation,” “dedicated account support from Meta’s team,” exclusive stickers for use on Instagram Stories and Reels, and 100 Stars a month to give to other creators on Facebook.
Those perks were apparently not enough to encourage the kind of creator uptake Meta was hoping for, because now, over two years later, it’s offering some creators one year of Meta Verified, for free.
Creator @ayfondo posted a screenshot on Threads showing Meta saying “valued creator[s]” can get Meta Verified for one year. That’s quite the lengthy free trial.
How could this pay off for Meta? First, the obvious: Some creators might like it enough to keep paying after the 12 months are up. There’s also the potential for Meta to count free users among its total Verified user base, making the amount of people using Verified look bulkier, though they still won’t add to its revenue.
How many people are already using Verified? Meta hasn’t publicly revealed that information, but Social Media Today estimates ~7 million, driving around ~$93 million in additional revenue per month, based on data from the company’s quarterly earnings. There’s no telling if those figures are accurate, but if they are, it would mean Meta is driving that much revenue from less than 1% of its user base paying for verification.
Creators, though, seem to be the target buyers, and in its message to “valued creator[s],” Meta doesn’t so much emphasize the prestige checkmarks once had attached to them. Instead, it hypes “enhanced support” from its team and promises protection from impersonation–an increasingly valuable service with generative AI running rampant.
Will creators take it up on the offer? That remains to be seen.
