Meta Launches Its Own Paid Verification For Facebook And Instagram: Following Twitter’s Lead

Facebook and Instagram users will soon have to pay to get themselves verified on Facebook and Instagram. Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook revealed his plans for a subscription tier. According to that the service would roll out in Australia and New Zealand in coming week.

The company is offering account verification with government ID, a verified blue check mark for Instagram and Facebook.

According to the company, they will charge $11.99/month on web and US $14.99/month on iOS and Android.

During the announcement of his plan, Zuckerberg stated that the initiative is to increase authenticity. In other words, he also said that the service would offer “extra impression protection”, improved reach for verified, authentic users and direct access to customers.

A user to sign-up by using Government ID provided by the company for identity authentication. Accounts must also have a posting history and to use the Meta the age of a user must be 18.

In contrast, when Elon Musk, CEO of Twitter launched the paid verification for blue check mark on Twitter, he threatened to remove existing verified user status from the accounts who have already allotted a check mark.

According to reports, only 290,000 users have subscribed to Twitter Blue up till now.

Most recently, Twitter announced that non-premium accounts will no longer use the SMS two factor authentication factor. Additionally, it plans to add a gold check mark for business accounts, who h will cost more than this.

Though, Meta has cut 11,000 of his workforce in November which is nearly 13% of its workforce. The company’s share price down by 70% in 2022.

In a tweet, Elon Musk said it was “inevitable”, Meta would follow Twitter.

Twitter Only Allows Paid Accounts to use SMS two-factor Authentication

On Friday, Elon Musk, chief executive of Twitter announced that Twitter would provide SMS-based two factor authentication only to those who have subscribed themselves to the account by paying US$8/month ($11.65) Twitter Blue service from March 20.

Currently, the company offers free two-factor authentication via third party apps and a security key, which is a secured process than SMS-based system.

In case if non-subscriber accounts that use SMS authentication do not switch by the deadline. Twitter has stated that two-factor authentication will be disabled for that particular account.

The above decision has raised many concerns that the change could result in widespread hacking of accounts next month if they do not switch over.

Previously, in 2021,only 2.6% of active users use two-factor authentication, 74.4% of those use SMS as the mode of authentication. .

According to Musk, fake two-factor authentication messages cost Twitter $60 million per year, which is indeed a hefty amount. In addition, he also claimed that scams are supported by telecommunication companies that has established bot accounts to operate the two-factor authentication process to generate revenue from text messages from Twitter.

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