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Facebook Announces Meta Verified

• dagorenouf 4y ago
  Twitter iterates like a startup and Facebook steals what works like a big old company.
  • zeroonetwothree 4y ago
    It’s not like Twitter invented the concept of a paid subscription
    • dagorenouf 4y ago
      they invented the concept of paid verification for a major social platform and everybody dunked on them, now others copy them. Kind of like when Apple removes jack port → people dunk on them → then every competitor removes it too.
• kvgr 4y ago
  This will be retracted in 2 weeks.
• anony23 4y ago
  I wouldn't even create a Meta account if they paid ME 11.99/month
• 5350-uiop-1130 4y ago
  imagine paying zuck to resolve a problem that was created by zuck. useful maybe if u make money on FB/Insta - but even that is so fickle, they can change their terms at any moment.
• markx2 4y ago
  "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."
  • RobotToaster 4y ago
    What makes this more ridiculous is that some of us have already been forced to verify with a government ID years ago, and they did that for free. (I think it's if you run a page with over a certain number of followers or something)
  • HeckFeck 4y ago
    "Nothing sinister to see here, move along!" t. Nick Clegg
    • swarnie 4y ago
      Nice to see the Tea Boy still getting work.
  • mrtqaf 4y ago
    Hilarious. You pay for the fact that they can track you better, build real life dossiers and charge advertisers more. Sometime ago it was "if it's free, you are the product". Let's change that to "you are always the product".
    • baby 4y ago
      People who say that usually don’t find facebook useful. Imagine saying that about google maps, gmail, spreadsheet, google docs, google meet, etc.
      • yazzku 4y ago
        People who say that don't want their identities prostituted. Whether or how useful it is is irrelevant. I don't want to have my identity prostituted based on the degree of how much I get in return.
        • baby 4y ago
          I’m not sure what that means by the way. It sounds like you’re mad that even others find facebook useful. I would get that checked out if I were you.
• Overtonwindow 4y ago
  Is this in reaction to, or because of Twitter? Many seemed yo have denounced the paid verification feature, but does this signal that it's something people will pay for?
  • DethNinja 4y ago
    It is valuable for business administrator accounts but I don’t see the value for the average user.
  • dawnerd 4y ago
    Likely something they’ve been working on way longer than it was a thought at Twitter.
    • kjksf 4y ago
      Uber re-wrote their 1 million loc mobile app in 3 months. How much time should it take to implement a subscription payment? With all the respect to Facebook scale, more than 1 month would be a failure. I'm not saying that Facebook did it because Twitter did it, but the timing of it seems more than a coincidence and they are using the same justification for doing it as Twitter. It's quite likely that Twitter doing it successfully overcame the risk aversion that large corporations are oversupplied with. https://blog.pragmaticengineer.com/uber-app-rewrite-yolo/ https://blog.pragmaticengineer.com/uber-app-rewrite-yolo/
      • dawnerd 4y ago
        Facebook isn’t a start up, thinks are not moving as quick as you think. The actual development probably went fast but the PM meetings, legal, etc all take a long time. I bet this has been in the works in some form since Apple’s crackdown on tracking.
  • kumarvvr 4y ago
    The format of pages, content structure and reach of facebook, linked to real world profiles and people, means that having a verified account makes a lot more sense. Twitter is an announcement platform. Facebook is a discussion platform. Comments, replies to comments, no content length limit, ability to upvote, etc.
• tleilaxu 4y ago
  Who on earth would look at what Twitter are doing right now and think “Hey, we should copy that! That seems to be working well!” Facebook… apparently.
  • celestialcheese 4y ago
    It's almost as if the media narrative around Twitter might not match reality.
    • Waterluvian 4y ago
      Twitter went from an unprofitable business to a very unprofitable business. It may be comforting to call it a “media narrative” but facts are facts. Maybe they can somehow turn it around but I don’t see how.
      • cinntaile 4y ago
        That doesn't sound accurate. Considering all the lay-offs and other cost cuts it should have gone from very unprofitable to unprofitable.
        • Waterluvian 4y ago
          Over half their advertisers have yet to return. Might be why Elon is personally promoting ads.
          • dmix 4y ago
            Source? Edit: 625 out of 1000 top companies advertising in sept weren't advertising in first weeks of Jan. https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/10/tech/twitter-top-advertiser-decline/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/10/tech/twitter-top-advertiser-d...
          • pessimizer 4y ago
            That doesn't have anything to do with verification badges, that has to do with the anti-Musk fandom lobbying his advertisers.
• thinkingemote 4y ago
  Genius to announce this after Twitter. Musk gets all the flak and takes the weight so they can do the same thing and everyone will think it's cool as they are used to the idea and Zuckerberg is nothing special to get inflamed about as he keeps himself quiet. Probably standard PR tactics than genius upon reflection!
  • kevincrane 4y ago
    …does anyone think this is cool?
• swarnie 4y ago
  https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FhJheQDX0AEqKPw.jpg https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FhJheQDX0AEqKPw.jpg So it begins....
• CatWChainsaw 4y ago
  Please say April 1st came a month and a half early. Although I do wonder if this is the opening salvo in sending "Facebook: it's free and always will be" the same way as Google's "don't be evil"...
• fatih-erikli 4y ago
  Noone takes android seriously which is good.
• tmikaeld 4y ago
  In short: A subscription service that lets you verify your account with a government ID, for $11.99/month/web or $14.99/month on iOS. Support included. If this removed ads, added more controls on what you see and what is shared/sold to 3rd party, I'd actually consider it! But ads are not mentioned and ads are probably worth more than 12$/user/mo and.. this would probably help them track you "better".
  • jefftk 4y ago
    Facebook makes $43/y per user on average [1], but it's $69/y in Europe and $235/y in the US and Canada. And then there's the problem that the users most likely to pay are more valuable than average to advertise to. [1] Worldwide quarterly ARPU x4: https://www.statista.com/statistics/251328/facebooks-average-revenue-per-user-by-region/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/251328/facebooks-average...
    • tmikaeld 4y ago
      Even if it was 20$/mo (higher than top yearly average), I'd consider it if it became a privacy service and focus shifted from the users to the product.
      • replicanteven 4y ago
        The problem is that people who are willing to pay $20/mo for privacy are much more valuable to advertisers than those who can't. If those users go away, the average $/user from ads goes down, because the only people seeing ads are those who are too poor to avoid it. To an advertiser, poor people who direct their attention towards whatever is put in front of them are worth a lot less than rich people who carefully curate what their attention is directed towards. It's grody, but that's the advertising industry for you.
        • MichaelZuo 4y ago
          Right, someone willing to regularly pay $20/month is probably worth closer to $40/month to potential advertisers. It probably scales all the way up until $10k/month, which is near the upper limit of what super-luxury brands, that would buy ads online, can earn per customer. So the curious implication is that such services could be 'free' or $20k/month. But with a changing advertising market and lower budgets, FB might view the alignment of incentives more beneficial.
• kkthxbb 4y ago
  I would've never said that that you will have to pay to have 12x12px icon next to your profile to confirm that you are really you.
• dm8 4y ago
  As someone who likes to pay for things I use, I'm in the target customer/user group here. Couple of questions - 1. Is it only for FB or across all Meta services (FB, IG, WhatsApp, Oculus etc.) 2. Are ads going to be shown to verified/premium subscribers? 2nd point is particularly important. Especially if key value prop is about security and privacy. Looks like ARPU for Meta is $40 annually. So financially they can afford not to show ads to verified subscribers (annual sub of $100+). However, for verified subscribers it's only about "blue badge" I doubt there will be huge uptick unless it has other "sweetners" like "no ads" like youtube premium. Overall - this is a great move by Meta. As it gives them ability to diversify revenue streams from ads where they are dependent on 3rd party platform privacy policies. YouTube premium has shown that social platforms can thrive with freemium model and they have roughly 80M subs ($1B+ revenue). Meta is trying to replicate same success with their brands.
  • zeroonetwothree 4y ago
    The type of person that can afford $144/year is going to have much higher ARPU than the overall average.
  • codq 4y ago
    YouTube Premium has a clear value prop though w/no ads—I’m still not sure what I’m getting for Meta Verified… a blue check? Direct support if I (probably won’t) need it? Twitter Blue now allows for longer tweets, and there is (or at least was) cachet around having a checkmark, so there is some cultural heritage there. Blue checks on Instagram have some clout, but I’ve never heard of someone eager for verification on Facebook. Protecting against impersonation is something these platforms should be doing for free. If this removed ads across the platforms then maybe there’d be value in this, but I really just don’t understand who this is for or why anyone would pay $100+/year.
• dazc 4y ago
  I can't wait to verify my account with Govt id! Then I remember my account is blocked because I failed at the opportunity to do this for free.
• mmastrac 4y ago
  It's cute, but the joke's on them: I don't really use Facebook for anything but marketplace these days. Cutting social media use has been a great boost for my mental health.
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• manishsharan 4y ago
  Can we all take a moment to enjoy the sounds of social media's business model imploding ?
• baby 4y ago
  This definitely looks like it targets big pages and personalities. If that’s true then that’s really cheap no? If it targeted normal users like me (I pay for twitter blue, for example) then it would let me do things like: - set chronological newsfeed - see less or no ads That’s it. That’s enough to get me to pay
  • Joeri 4y ago
    Facebook gets about 50 billion usd / year of ad revenue in the U.S. for 226 million mau. That boils down to about $18 / month / user of ad revenue. Is it worth $20 / month to get no ads and a chronological feed?
    • codq 4y ago
      No ads or tracking across all Meta platforms/pixels? I'd say that's worth $20/month.
      • baby 4y ago
        I actually don’t mind tracking as I’m interested in better ads in general (if I really have to see them)
        • eviks 4y ago
          Except you don't get better ads
          • baby 4y ago
            I’ve actually purchased a number of things through instagram ads, so I would say that they are getting better. Now I can also say I have been disappointed by the quality of some of the stuff I’ve bought through ads… so now if I see something interesting I’ll google/amazon/reddit it. It at least makes me discover new types of things to buy.
    • baby 4y ago
• ssnistfajen 4y ago
  This is why I laugh when people here pretend that SV isn't also built upon copying, stealing, and cheating.
• skilled 4y ago
  Hahaha. This is actually hilarious. They won’t budge to change and innovate so instead they copy and paste what Musk did on Twitter and just leave it at “fuck it”.
  • annadane 4y ago
    My first impression of this is literally "So, maybe a good idea, but isn't this Zuckerberg just copying yet another person like he's always done forever?"
• CraigRood 4y ago
  Real-Verified is the next logical step. Twitter will being following suit very soon. That said, how does this add value to Meta? Isn't this just another indication that Meta through its products sees less value in actual relationships and more in algo-driven timelines? Snap seems to be the only social network left that is personal.
• jawns 4y ago
  It's strange for ID verification to be presented as a subscription offering, given that it should suffice to verify it once (or for relatively long periods). Obviously, Meta is after that sweet sweet MRR. But the consumer should recognize that they're paying for a one-time or infrequent task as if it involves ongoing effort. From the consumer standpoint, a one-time fee makes much more sense.
  • tmikaeld 4y ago
    That's probably why they baked in "support" into the offer. Maybe the logic with paying goes that, if you loose access to the account for any reason - you can just stop paying and it will no longer be verified.
• epaulson 4y ago
  Every time I see these pay-for-verification schemes I can't help but think of Dr. Seuss and the Star-Bellied Sneetches: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VohyMXB4FLo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VohyMXB4FLo I must not be the target audience for this because I can't see how paying nearly as much as Amazon Prime is worth it so I can get comment priority and a little star next to my FB account, which is friends-only anyway. If they threw something useful in, like a music or video streaming service with a decent catalog or airline miles or a discount at Target, then maybe.
  • jvm___ 4y ago
    I think it's a response to the incoming AI revolution. Just because someone writes in your name and your style online won't mean it's you when ChatGPT or the next version can clone your writing style in seconds. Being verified online is going to be more important for businesses and people as the internet degrades into the quality level of recipe sites.
    • rvz 4y ago
      > Being verified online is going to be more important for businesses and people as the internet degrades into the quality level of recipe sites. Now someone is thinking and making sense. But I don't think this current AI cycle is anything of a 'revolution'. It is more like a pure hype and mania driven reaction over a hallucinating AI generating sophistry. There is no breakthrough in this other than 'train it on more data and watch it go off the rails' like what we have seen with Bing AI. This is just Tay 2.0.
      • jvm___ 4y ago
        No breakthrough for sure, but the usability at an adequate level for almost any text or code generation, doesn't mean we need full AGI to start breaking society. If feels like people are expecting robocop, but owning an electric table saw, KitchenAid mixer and a electric golf cart - in the year 1800 - would still be revolutionary even if those are just stupid tools. ChatGPT is a stupid tool, but what that tool, in unskilled human hands can do, will be more revolutionary than ChatGPT becoming some self-aware robot.
• nojs 4y ago
  I think the bigger news is they’re offering “priority customer support” for a monthly fee. Imagine if this became a trend among other big tech companies.
  • StrLght 4y ago
    I believe it's already a thing with a lot of companies. I worked at a company that had restaurant delivery app, very similar to Uber Eats / DoorDash (but not in the US). ~10% of top spenders there got priority support.
  • pleb_nz 4y ago
    I think it might already be. A few times in the last month I've stumbled across sites with this offering when joining/subscribing (the names escape me now) and everytime I thought who would pay for that? Now you mention it clicked maybe it's a new thing?
  • logicalmonster 4y ago
    This is an interesting sneaky way of making social media a subscription service for many, but I'd think the benefits for any business seriously using social media are probably good enough to justify the fee. That said, why offer 2 different payments for web and mobile? This just introduces too much confusion for an entirely new concept like this. Anything that gives people some possibility of human contact in the event of a problem is a welcome baby step forward, but this isn't really good enough. If Meta screws up something with blocking/banning your account and you're not subscribed, are you still completely unable to get in touch with anybody, for any price? These are the people slipping through the gaps that I worry about.
    • ShrimpHawk 4y ago
      >That said, why offer 2 different payments for web and mobile? Mobile (Google Play, Apple App Store) takes a cut from transactions made through them. Companies don't want to lose money. Companies have been doing this for as long they could. It is not anything new. https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/answer/112622?hl=en https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/answ...
• benjaminwootton 4y ago
  Love or hate Elon, he could definitely have an impact on the tech industry. In a few months he could demonstrate that you don’t need as many employees as you thought, that you don’t need the heavy handed moderation/censorship, and that you could actually charge for your services rather than being wholly dependent on advertising. All positive developments for the industry IMO.
  • DeepYogurt 4y ago
    That or he kills the company
    • grecy 4y ago
      Absolutely right, that is a possible outcome. Personally, I'd rather try something and have it not work out and learn the lessons than sit around saying "what if" for the rest of my life.
      • lukevp 4y ago
        With 40 billion dollars on the line? I think it’d make more sense to think through things and evolve it over time rather than shooting from the hip constantly. Morale at Twitter must be even lower than Amazon at this point.
        • latchkey 4y ago
          > Morale at Twitter must be even lower than Amazon at this point. Why would you say that though? The people who've hung on this long probably want to be there. https://twitter.com/leahculver/status/1625961159894663169 https://twitter.com/leahculver/status/1625961159894663169
          • rvnx 4y ago
            Then it's very strange that they created the #oneteam with blue hearts if they are so happy ?
• abzolv 4y ago
  What about the verified status can change, that merits a recurring charge versus a once-off charge? Can you suddenly morph into “not you”?
  • tmikaeld 4y ago
    Other accounts flagging you for not being you, is a very real thing on FB. I've had relatives loose two account into limbo, because of this and yes - even after being "verified" on one of them. I guess the logic is that if someone took over your account, so you're no longer you.
    • abzolv 4y ago
      Why would that merit a recurring charge? In other words, what ongoing expense is incurred by the company to display a particular icon next to your name?
      • tmikaeld 4y ago
        You'd only be verified as long as you're paying, stop paying and that account is no longer verified.
• xwdv 4y ago
  You know I hope this is the start of finally normalizing paid subscriptions for social networks, because it means eventually someone may try to build a social network funded purely by subscriptions rather than ads, and then we might finally have simple timelines again that aren’t focused on maximizing user views and retention through algorithms. The result can be a less enraging and addicting experience for users.
• redox99 4y ago
  $12 is too high if it's not going to remove ads.
• mcraiha 4y ago
  Will this generate any meaningful revenue for any company? AFAIK Twitter has 300 000 global paying users. And I assume you would need few million paying users before this has any meaningful effect. https://www.theinformation.com/articles/musks-twitter-has-just-180-000-u-s-subscribers-two-months-after-launch https://www.theinformation.com/articles/musks-twitter-has-ju...
• toastal 4y ago
  I liked the Keybase model better for verification. Why do we need monthly fees?
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• bsaul 4y ago
  Anyone else find this announcement totally pathetic ? In what world does anyone care about meta impersonation anymore ? Does anyone make public announcement on meta beside meta employees ?
  • jonathankoren 4y ago
    Worse yet, it’s clear they have no ideas or understanding why this was a bad idea at Twitter. It’s just copying for copying sake.
    • anonuser123456 4y ago
      Was it a bad idea at twitter? Or was Musks handling of the whole situation just crap? If Musk had made an impassioned case about why, and engaged peoples concerns in a grown-up way it might have gone better.
      • bionade24 4y ago
        It certainly was the handling and the strategy how they'd introduce it. First, they obviously should haven't repurposed an existing badge. Im my opinion, setting a lower price in the 1st three months and openly communicating that the price will increase a bit seems like a choice to get quick adoption. 8$/month is too high when people can't experience the value of it yet.
      • jonathankoren 4y ago
        It is both. It was an asinine play obvious to anyone that thought about the trolling for half a second, and the purported benefits were what? Now you too can get a blue checkmark? Sure the verification process was capricious crap, but now he's ransoming back features to people. Musk is a fool. But Zuck is the fool that follow him.
  • labrador 4y ago
    > In what world does anyone care about meta impersonation anymore? My 84 yr old mother does. It really annoys her when someone steals her profile picture, makes an account in her name and starts sending friend requests to her friends. I told her Facebook could fix this easily but they don't want to. Now I can tell her they want to charge her to fix it.
• replicanteven 4y ago
  Shortsighted. If they're willing to stoop this low, they should have started by selling multiple kinds of badges for smaller monthly amounts. $0.99/mo for emojis. $1.99/ to show your support for various causes. $3.99/ for sports teams. $4.99/ for ID verification. $0.49/ of your red cross badge goes to earthquake survivors. Like virtual hats, but for social media.
  • anonuser123456 4y ago
    “I am not a bot/intelligence services construct/foreign troll masquerading as an citizen etc.”. Is a pretty valuable service for the network. Right now it’s a property not advertised to network participants. But in the near future you might seem the following above unverified accounts posting about controversial topics “Careful. This person could not be identified. They may be a bot or falsifying their identify to misrepresent opinion” At which point, the value of verification goes up. Maybe.
    • wombat_trouble 4y ago
      > “I am not a bot/intelligence services construct/foreign troll masquerading as an citizen etc.”. Is a pretty valuable service for the network. It is valuable to Facebook to maintain a healthy pltform. But is it really worth $15 a month to you to broadcast this to others? Unless the culture of the platform shifts to a point where non-verified accounts are considered second-class, the only reason to pay this is basically as a status symbol. In which case, I think the tiered approach makes more sense. And maybe "Facebook Gold" for people who want to pay even more for a badge.... Twitter had their checkmarks established as an artificially constrained status symbol you couldn't buy with money... and then, under Musk, they altered the terms of the deal by saying you have to pay, but you get tangible perks in terms of platform features, visibility of your content, etc. Unless Facebook wants to do that, I can't see people paying this much on their own...
      • anonuser123456 4y ago
        Personally, I wouldn’t pay Meta because their platform is already beyond salvageable IMO. But in principle, I think networks should charge their users and provide services, and identity is the most-in-need service the internet lacks. Will users pay for identity? Probably not, but one can dream.
• weberer 4y ago
  >which will let users verify their accounts using a government ID and get a blue badge, as it looks to help content creators grow and build communities Useless bullshit. I was hoping for a paid model where you can get rid of ads for good. Instagram has become unusable over the past year as they shove ads into more and more places. Its like reading a book and every time you turn the page, you have a random chance of getting smacked in the face.
  • profstasiak 4y ago
    problam with paying to stop ads is - the people most willing to pay to stop ads are richer than average and meta earns more from serving ads to them than they are willing to pay
    • freediverx 4y ago
      [dead]
    • hyperbovine 4y ago
      That's a good point, I had never looked at it that way. But here's my counterpoint: the people willing to pay to stop seeing ads are the ones who are most hostile, and therefore least susceptible, to online advertising. I've been online since the early 90s and I could probably count on one hand the number of times I've intentionally clicked on an ad.
      • playingalong 4y ago
        Still, I guess you are not that certain how many times an ad has affected your subconscious and triggered some change in your commercial decisions later on. The whole brand awareness, etc.
    • blehn 4y ago
      YouTube made 28bn in ad revenue and probably somewhere in the range of 5-10bn (and growing) in ad-free subscription revenue last year, so it's clearly a viable model even if what you say is partially true. That said, I'd argue that YouTube's content is far more valuable than Meta's, and its ads are far more intrusive, so the incentive to pay is much higher.
• ProjectArcturis 4y ago
  For $12 a month I'd get a blue badge?
• jmugan 4y ago
  If they would turn off the advertisements and let me control my feed and notifications, it might pay. I'd be mad about it, but I might pay.
  • hackernewds 4y ago
    how much would you pay?
    • jmugan 4y ago
      Not sure. I pay for GitHub just because I like it.
    • lordnacho 4y ago
      Same as YouTube Premium. FB without ads would be great, and might change Meta's incentives going forward.
      • 0xdada 4y ago
        Not for me, personally. FB without ads still has no interesting content for me. YouTube premium is the best value for my money out of all my subscriptions due to content. On Facebook the network effect that made it cool in the beginning has now died and it will keep it from ever coming back for the same reasons it was great in the beginning. I'm very confident people I really care about will not start posting there, and they probably have the same thought process. It's just uncool.
  • dewey 4y ago
    The problem with this is that people usually underestimate what they are worth to a company like Meta and "I'd be willing to pay 5 bucks for no ads" is usually not above the LTV/month threshold.
    • deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
• gkoberger 4y ago
  I don't want to sound like I'm defending Meta, but at least there's something behind this verification. On Twitter, there's just so many face-less spam troll accounts that are verified, and all a blue check means is that the person likes Elon enough to give him $8. At least Facebook requires a government ID, and the verification confirms that the person is who they say they are. (I do think if they really cared, especially in the face of looming AI advancements, this would be free. This only really works if most real people are verified, otherwise there's nothing suspicious about a non-verified account.)
  • Alex3917 4y ago
    > At least Facebook requires a government ID, and the verification confirms that the person is who they say they are. But Facebook has already required this for years to run advertisements. So they're now charging for the thing that they were previously doing for everyone for free, making the site less safe and secure.
  • grepfru_it 4y ago
    >At least Facebook requires a government ID, and the verification confirms that the person is who they say they are. I photoshopped my dad's driver's license 25 years ago. I used it to successfully confirm to a website that I was over 18. I'm pretty sure that method is still viable today
    • csomar 4y ago
      Some services requires that you video chat with them and your ID. Would be harder to do unless you have a powerful gptvideo.
      • grepfru_it 4y ago
        Which services that Facebook offer would that be?
• anonylizard 4y ago
  I think pay-for-verification is going to be dominant on all real-identity social media. Reason is simple: AI 1.You can now trivially create an avatar photo, of any level of attractiveness, of any race, of any age. You can even reproduce the same character reliably in different environments/costumes via stable diffusion + LORA. 2. You can now easily create a comment history on that account, thanks to ChatGPT. 3. You can even produce voices reliably with just a few samples. There's no real defense against AI impersonation at scale, except for charging-for-verification. The money drastically increases the cost for impersonators and scammers/catfishers, and provides resources on the other end to moderate impersonation.
  • notahacker 4y ago
    I think the pay-for-verification might solve those problems ship sailed when Twitter decided that a symbol which had previously meant they'd attempted verification could be given to pretty much anyone who paid them $8 a month... Impersonation-at-scale depends on scale, not verification of individual accounts as authentic people with authentic notability and opinions, and impersonation not at scale sometimes feels more motivated to pay the $8 than the person or position being impersonated.
    • anonuser123456 4y ago
      Once/if consumers value identity this might change. If everyone on twitter were paying for verification, I think twitter would be much more interested in defending the sanctity of said system. As it stands, they are currently just trying to get the feature out there and get people to pay. Getting it deployed trumps making it perfect.
      • notahacker 4y ago
        They already had a verification feature deployed which wasn't perfect but was reasonably strict. Then they debased it for a new revenue stream. I don't see them making the now that we've got a bunch of people paying for it, lets reduce our revenue by suddenly becoming strict on it again decision. Or people taking the badge more seriously now it just means someone subscribed to Twitter Blue
• TheAceOfHearts 4y ago
  The key feature seems to be access to customer support. If you have a large audience or following on Facebook and it's relevant to your business then I could probably see it being worthwhile. For regular users the value proposition seems questionable? I'd probably be more fine with a one-time fixed-cost verification service, considering it probably requires a human to manually verify and approve each request. But a monthly subscription? That feels like a rent-seeking cash grab. Do you suddenly forget about someone's verification status as soon as they stop paying? If anyone reading this comment is considering paying for this service I'd love to hear what makes this service worthwhile for you.
• Animats 4y ago
  "It's free and it always will be" disappeared back in 2019. [1] https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2019/08/27/facebook-no-longer-says-free-and-always-be-homepage/2133300001/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2019/08/27/facebook-no-l...
  • j-bos 4y ago
    These bold slogans seem to be pretty good canaries, like when google removed "don't be evil"
    • tpmx 4y ago
      "imgur will never have ads" Still kind of upset that that immediately obvious lie back in back in 2009 paid off. I was there in the background noise in that first reddit post, saying the obvious. It would not surprise me one bit if it turned out that the reddit founders manipulated that one post to make it go the right way.
      • everdrive 4y ago
        At least they didn't claim "imgur will never get bought out by another company and require tracking javascript to even view images."
      • stavros 4y ago
        imgz.org will definitely never have ads.
        • tpmx 4y ago
          But it isn't free. Edit: I see a random hustler got me to flog some paid saas. Apologies. Do feel free to downvote the shit out of this subthread.
          • stavros 4y ago
            Yes, that's why it'll never have ads.
• gowld 4y ago
  What a creative, innovative, idea that could only come from the rare genius that deserves a $multi-billion ownership stake in the company.
• DueDilligence 4y ago
  .. yawn. next.
• neogodless 4y ago
  ... and eliminates all ads from your user experience?
  • fullshark 4y ago
    I think it's for content creators / official accounts, so basically people want to advertise or do public relations moreso than consumers.
• DueDilligence 4y ago
  .. yawn. next.
• neogodless 4y ago
  Previous related submissions: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34859919 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34859919 1 hour ago (22 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34858691 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34858691 3 hours ago (77 comments) Both point to Facebook post by Mark Zuckerberg: > 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.
  • jasongill 4y ago
    > extra impersonation protection against accounts claiming to be you My tech-ignorant father-in-law who has 3 friends on Instagram had a fake profile created that was identical to his and matched his username except 1 minor character difference. I reported it to Facebook and the reply was "We get so many requests, we haven't had time to review yours, so we are closing it out. Sorry." Funny that now you can pay $12/mo for them to... maybe not ignore reports of impersonators?
    • wongarsu 4y ago
      "we were overwhelmed with requests, so now we charge money to process them" sounds reasonable. It also aligns incentives: Facebook now has a reason to have enough support people to respond to requests from paying customers, otherwise they might stop paying.
• Imnimo 4y ago
  Maybe I'm behind the times, but isn't the whole deal of Facebook that I've chosen to be friends with these people who I know in real life? Why do I need them to be verified?
  • baby 4y ago
    There are celebrities you can follow on fb now. Or companies.
  • deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  • wodenokoto 4y ago
    You don't. This is for the Lady Gaga's and Elon Musks of facebook. Followers want to be able to know if they are following the real deal, and the real deal wants to be certain that they can be differentiated from the fakes.
    • Imnimo 4y ago
      I must not understand how Facebook works anymore. I didn't realize you can follow people, I thought you just sent mutual friend requests.
      • dbbk 4y ago
        It's also for Instagram.
      • technion 4y ago
        It used to be that you could search for "John" and it would show you a range of Johns that you might know. I just tried it and it recommended several "John Wick" pages. I found the button to set the search to only show "People", and it now shows me several Keanu Reeves accounts (probably all fake). I guess if you accept that this is what they want their search to look like, the "verified" angle does work.
    • wg0 4y ago
      There would be 20,000 such Stars paying 10 dollars a month. Than what?
• hn_throwaway_99 4y ago
  Honestly, all of this "pay for a verified badge" BS from Twitter, now FB and others seems exactly equivalent to when companies release software with vulnerabilities and then also charge you for the antivirus software to protect against that (thankfully, that seems to be less of an issue these days). Why don't these companies have a responsibility to prevent fraudulent signups in the first place - especially Facebook which has, from day #1, prevented non-real-person signups in their Ts-and-Cs.
  • westoque 4y ago
    i actually support the pay to verify feature. my reasoning for this is it gives authenticity to the user. if the user is verified then i know that the user is most likely not a bot account and gives some credibility. could this be free? certainly, it’s how the old twitter verified works but now since all users can be verified, it democratizes this feature and i think its better overall. i notced discussions with similarly verified users are more civilized probably due to the personal information being shared and makes them think twice about doing anything malicious or otherwise.
  • basch 4y ago
    Or like Microsoft making conditional access a premium and not base feature of identity. “We can see hackers are in your account, enter your credit card and upgrade now so we can boot them for you.”
• tarkin2 4y ago
  I guess it could fight against fake profiles manipulating the online social commons
• wcerfgba 4y ago
  Can anyone steelman an argument that this move won't make verification and blue ticks effectively useless for determinig the authenticity of accounts? My initial thought is that this creates an incentive for the companies to have more permissive verification processes, since that would make sales easier and reduce costs.
  • deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
• agilob 4y ago
  So I get to be verified ONCE, but pay monthly for the same thing I have to do to unblock my hacked account? No extra benefits, like fewer ads and sponsored tailored content?
• seydor 4y ago
  Quite desperate of these companies to charge their most important assets, the influencers/publishers. $10 is the cost to run their own website with complete editorial freedom, and if people want to follow them, get an RSS reader. The whole advantage of FB/twitter is that it 's cheaper and broader. And this model doesnt even scale up. FB makes ~$60 per user/year which is comparable. If people start verifying en masse, they dont have the capacity to really verify the users identity, that the users haven't sold their accounts etc etc. They are shooting their moneymaker here What i like about these payment schemes is that they put a real value on the company, based on what customers are willing to pay for the service, not the nebulous advertising return. The results of these programs should also inform investors about the true value of the companies.
  • deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
• danShumway 4y ago
  Notably, it appears you'll still see ads and get tracked. Websites tracking their users and shoving ads in their faces isn't really the "alternative" to paid services. It's something paid services often do in addition to charging money, because they're unwilling to leave any money on the table in any situation, and you can always get more money by charging your users and harvesting their data.
  • rileyphone 4y ago
    The users willing to pay for a monthly subscription are much higher value for ads than those who don’t, simple as.
    • danShumway 4y ago
      Exactly. No company ever looks at a potential revenue stream and says "we have enough money already."
  • nixcraft 4y ago
    Elon Musk said there would be another subscription option for a Twitter app like YouTube premium with zero ads for those who can afford it. He said the price would be more than Twitter blue, and work is in progress. The question is, how many premium ad-free subscriptions can one person get? YouTube? Tumblr? Twitter? Facebook? Insta? It could easily be $100 per month.
    • danShumway 4y ago
      > He said the price would be more than Twitter blue This is the other thing that pops up, in the rare instances where services like this are offered, they're often pretty inflated. It's notable that Youtube Premium comes with a music service and it's impossible to de-bundle them. I honestly think that part of the reason for this is to make people think that ad-free services aren't economically feasible. I'm supposed to believe that the cost to Twitter to deliver ad-free and tracking-free text streams is higher than the cost for Netflix/Google to stream unlimited HD video to all of my devices on demand. > The question is, how many premium ad-free subscriptions can one person get? YouTube? Tumblr? Twitter? Facebook? Insta? It could easily be $100 per month. The thing is, what we're seeing is a push to monetize more services through subscriptions anyway. Like, this is a better argument if Twitter and Facebook aren't both pushing people to give them roughly $10 a month anyway. I think that the advertising industry and traditional media companies have sold people on this idea that ads are somehow magically keeping the Internet free and and it would collapse otherwise, but if the trend continues and they all start charging anyway, then...
• giancarlostoro 4y ago
  They are several years late to this. I think had Facebook done this before smartphones took their Facebook Games marketshare and done perks for subscribers they could of really gotten a lot of subscribers. We are seeing as Apple cracks down on advertisers snooping more than they should that social media platforms will have to switch to subscription to supplement their income loss.
• bmitc 4y ago
  It seems to be a common theme to charge for something you already provide. From taking away ports so you can charge for dongles, adding in ads so that you have to pay to take them away, to charging subscriptions for previously free services.
• morpheos137 4y ago
  "Free" and subsidised services online and in "Tech" e.g. uber are just the same old monopolistic tactic of "dumping" to get market share then jack up prices.
• wongarsu 4y ago
  Makes perfect sense, it's an easy way to generate revenue from everyone who earns money on Instagram. I wouldn't pay $12 each month for a blue checkmark, but for nearly everyone who profits from sponsorships or who advertises their business it's a cheap way to get a bit of extra clout.
• conceptme 4y ago
  It's kinda weird that it used to be a platform for people that you know in real life, that's no longer the case and nothing has taken It's place.
  • Thorentis 4y ago
    I think people in the target demographics actually stopped caring about those around them to this level. Sad, but I think true.
  • generated 4y ago
    I would pay a token amount to only show my friends' updates, all my friends updates, in reverse chronological order.
    • MagnumOpus 4y ago
      Use the F.B.Purity browser extension.
    • likeabbas 4y ago
      BeReal is pretty nice for this tbh. Snapchat Stories used to be nice but IG killed that and then Snapchat had to find other niches
    • wkat4242 4y ago
      Yeah exactly, like Facebook used to do before this algorithmic feed was a thing. It was actually quite good back then. Now it's unusable and I left it long ago.
  • arkitaip 4y ago
    Tons of people use Whatsapp, Imo and other chat to keep in touch with friends and families without the nonsense of social media.
    • johannes1234321 4y ago
      Yes, chronological timeline and push! And that only¹ for people in the group. ¹) Yes, yes, Facebook/Meta hassome access and security issues might exist etc., but way different from public-by-default Facebook
• Spastche 4y ago
  seems like needless rent-seeking for a dying company
  • meepmorp 4y ago
    the rent seeking is a way to keep the place going, ad revenue is down and they're still shoveling money into the metaverse
• nitwit005 4y ago
  Feels like this is the wrong approach for Meta, given that they're paying creators in various ways now. Turning around and demanding them send some money back to get protection against impersonators is going to seem very unfriendly.
• qualudeheart 4y ago
  Elon has proven a point.
• amanzi 4y ago
  I don't understand why Meta and Twitter are charging a monthly fee for this. Surely, it's in their best interest to have as many verified users as possible on their respective platforms? Surely, they want to get to the point where there are so many verified people, that you don't trust anything that comes from a non-verified user? I understand there's a massive logistical challenge with verifying users across the globe, but there must be a better way than charging a non-trivial monthly fee for the "benefit" of being verified.
  • blastonico 4y ago
    I believe they have made some projections before charging for it. So, I assume that only a small amount is willing to pay for it. There can be an explosion in the first months, but most people will cancel the subscription when they realize how useless this thing is. I believe it tends to normalize in a curve not so distant from what we have today.
• pessimizer 4y ago
  Does that mean that we can use fake names again? I mean, you can get "facebook verified" just by getting locked out of your account and having them demand photo ID to let you back in again. Facebook certainly force-verified me.
  • charcircuit 4y ago
    Facebook lets you create 4 additional profiles with pseudonyms for users who don't want to use an account with their real name. Your main account still needs to use your real name, but you can just not use it. https://facebook.com/help/967154637433480 https://facebook.com/help/967154637433480
  • timeon 4y ago
    > Does that mean that we can use fake names again? I still have one.
• freitzkriesler2 4y ago
  Who here is part of the, " deleted my Facebook" club? Raises hand
• zh3 4y ago
  Let's see - on Facebook the rules were always you had to use your real name. Now they're charging us for it?
• Havoc 4y ago
  Ad supported and paid. Oh joy
• rejectfinite 4y ago
  HN this is not for you. This is for celebs and inportant people.
• neverrroot 4y ago
  Would be glad to pay, if my privacy will be respected, and I won’t just be now paying money for the same stuff. Actually I’d rather more companies transition to paying models, instead of spying on me however way they can to ensure they can make money. Would you also? Or would you rather have it free regardless of what that implies?
• blobster 4y ago
  We already do identity verification in the real world, it's called government issued IDs. There should be opt-in OS-level identity verification based on zero knowledge proofs and tied to your government-issued digital ID. This also solves issues like preventing minors from accessing adult sites, etc. I should not have to verify with 1000 third parties and hand over my personal data and then hope it's handled properly and doesn't get leaked. We have zero knowledge proofs and we can get OS makers to make this seamless for us.
  • noisenotsignal 4y ago
    There’s ID.me [0], which the IRS uses. They seem to be geared towards government services but I’ve always thought a natural extension is auth for other sites. [0] - https://www.id.me/ https://www.id.me/
  • gjsman-1000 4y ago
    Yes… but then you have the same arguments that are used to claim Voter ID is voter suppression…
    • epgui 4y ago
      Not if it's opt-in and not required to access critical services.
      • mertd 4y ago
        Then what is the value proposition?
      • lmm 4y ago
        People want to use this for critical services. I already found I couldn't contact my country's passport agency except by Twitter, for example.
    • gonzo41 4y ago
      In other countries, they exist, to vote you just register with the independent voting commission, and on the day they confirm your registered address and give you the paper forms. No voter id required. The OP can verify with proper ID and be safe. The gov just needs to regulate that rather than keep copies of all the originals. They just have something like a checkbox, where you're either verified or not and a human / smart system is involved and no record is permanently kept of the docs. Anyway, I don't anticipate this feature working out for meta.
• CharlesW 4y ago
  I personally like this. However, the pricing is bonkers and demonstrates how out of touch Zuck is. "It's one banana, Michael. What could it cost, $10?" — Lucille Bluth Sorry Meta, I'm not giving you $576/year (family of 4) ongoing. Validate that I am who I say I am for a one-time fee of $99, or $19/person/year, and I'm in. I'll even pony up $29/person/year for a "no ads" plan.
• benatkin 4y ago
  If it was fair it wouldn't verify itself.
• andrewstuart 4y ago
  This is huge - a product I have wanted for a long time. I assume/hope this will be available to third party sites so we can verify users.
• marcopicentini 4y ago
  Why should I pay to say the truth? It should be the bot to pay to convince for its lie
• dopa42365 4y ago
  If for whatever reason you absolutely NEED a different account than everyone else (very special VIP person), you might as well pay for it.
• shp0ngle 4y ago
  It would make sense as a 12 usd one-time payment. But as an ongoing service, it’s laughably overpriced. 12 dollars per month??? for a blue badge? Really?
  • hypothesis 4y ago
    They absolutely should charge it if people are willing to pay that much.
    • shp0ngle 4y ago
      Well let’s see who actually pays 12 dollars ongoing monthly payments for a blue badge. that’s more than basic monthly netflix
      • kjkjadksj 4y ago
        The intended customer is probably social media managers for companies or influencers who spend a whole lot more on their business than $12 a month. Not Aunt peggy.
  • deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  • impulser_ 4y ago
    I don't think the target audience of this service is regular user, but instead they are targeting companies and influencers who would definitely pay this price to protect their brand and image on FB and Instagram.
  • digianarchist 4y ago
    Thousands of rubes doing just that for Twitter Blue. Zuck would be foolish to not take advantage of the same market.
• hownottowrite 4y ago
  Maybe just fix targeted ads and get back to making money?
• fredgrott 4y ago
  Question, does this even matter? We can already buy any fake press release...verification is just a visual cue online akin to a press release indicating that its value is now somewhat below zero.
• college_physics 4y ago
  $12 per month and user for a "social experience" that still tracks you and spams you is an insane amount. If you consider that amount × 1000 for a very modest open source fediverse instance hosting circa one thousand users, that is more than enough to sustain admins, moderators and spare change for some development. The economic model of social media never made any sense and its hard to see how it will sustain going forward.
• kundi 4y ago
  We had a case where our ad account got hacked through an agency that was managing it and set up ads for enormous amounts, which drained all our funds within 2 days. After praising and trying to get it solved and refunded, after 6 months we still haven’t come to a conclusion with Facebook’s poor customer service. During that time we were unable to use their platform to recover the funds on the ad accounts. I’m not sure how they plan to improve the customer service, but this attempt just feels like pouring more frustration to our team with Facebook.
• mr90210 4y ago
  When I left Facebook in 2016/17 and later Twitter in 2020, I didn’t know how how much freedom and mental ease I was buying for my future-self.
• iamleppert 4y ago
  Imagine if Experian announced that you need to pay $11.99/mo to make your credit report secure and to stop your identity from being stolen and allow you to do something about it if it was. Sound familiar? The only thing that’s going to stop every random company you have an account with from trying to extort a fee just to make sure an account is actually you is going to be regulation.
  • 300bps 4y ago
    I never opted in to Experian or any of the credit reporting agencies. Anyone who sets up a Facebook account has chosen to do so because they find value in it. If they ever stop finding value in it they can delete it. I don’t see a problem with them offering an option for people who want it to validate themselves for a fee. Seems like a direct copy of Elon Musk’s idea for Twitter which I also don’t see an issue with.
    • kube-system 4y ago
      Don’t creditors have to disclose that they are going to report to a credit reporting agency before you decide to take out a line or credit? For example, I’ve always seen something like this in my credit agreements: > You agree that we will give information about the Account to credit reporting agencies. We will tell a credit reporting agency if you fail to comply with any term of this Agreement. This may have a negative impact on your credit report.
      • bombcar 4y ago
        Indeed. And it is barely possible to keep from having a credit report at all depending on what you do. But it is difficult to avoid any of those forms.
        • kube-system 4y ago
          It’s hard to do while keeping up with the Joneses, but 26 million Americans manage to do it. https://www.consumerfinance.gov/about-us/newsroom/cfpb-report-finds-26-million-consumers-are-credit-invisible/ https://www.consumerfinance.gov/about-us/newsroom/cfpb-repor...
• jfengel 4y ago
  I wonder if this information will be available to people using Facebook as single sign in. Many sites are happy to have free accounts but only one to a person. They want to avoid sock puppets and abuses like spam. If you had to pay even a tiny bit it would drastically cut down on it, but most users won't. If everyone had a pay for account somewhere that they could use elsewhere, others could piggyback off of it. (It might even be worth a small fee to Facebook, for a service they provide very cheaply.)
• bogomipz 4y ago
  Does anyone suspect this is little more than a ploy for them add government issued IDs to their trove of user data? I'm guessing this is a way for Mark to sell a new premium tier of data to advertisers. He can charge advertisers for access to a "blue checkmark" tier of user data for an extra fee. The idea that they are asking users to now pay FB for the privilege of giving them even more personal data is so twisted that I think only Zuckerberg could come up with it.
• Cadwhisker 4y ago
  Damn, I was reading the words "Facebook Announces Meta Verified" and I took "verified" to mean you can see content that is "fact-checked" or at least filtered for some kind of accuracy. Yeah, I know. That was very naieve.
• shrimpx 4y ago
  $0/mo: you're the product. $15/mo: you're the product + you have to turn in your government ID.
• batch12 4y ago
  I don't use Facebook. I would be tempted to if, instead of verification, the paid service removed all ads and tracking.
• janalsncm 4y ago
  Someone no doubt will create some sort of verification as a service to centralize the entire process. If I’m an app creator this will enable me to make sure all of my user accounts are real.
• lee101 4y ago
  [dead]
• bogomipz 4y ago
  It's kind of ridiculous to think that the act of verification is somehow an ongoing service that's needs a monthly fee. When you open a bank account or line of credit or anything else that requires identification that action generally takes place once. If you prove you are who you are claiming to be then next week or next month or next year you are still verified. What does FB do every month for that $12 or $15? There is no ongoing maintenance for verification. It's a one time thing.
• dagmx 4y ago
  The bigger question is…why is this a monthly charge? Verification is a one time service. A monthly charge for support may make sense, but what value is there for the rest of the people who would want to prove it’s themselves but not need support?
  • cute_boi 4y ago
    The primary motivation is they gotta fill their coffers every month. They can't charge all users because they might lose too many people to other social media like Tiktok. But with such tactics they can provide additional perks like fewer ads, preferred support, etc..
  • yieldcrv 4y ago
    thats because it is a misnomer, “verify” isn't a verb it is a noun in this case. It is a state that isn't perpetually relevant to the person that is in that state. the utility has value for a little while for consumer protection purposes it is totally broken for an account to move out of verified status, but thinking further, this is actually better than whats currently happening, where perpetually verified accounts are hacked
  • npteljes 4y ago
    You must not confuse yourself with whatever coating they put on the thing. It's rent extraction, built on the already established power that is Facebook, and the preconceptions people have when they recognize the branding (Facebook, and the verified check mark). The rest is irrelevant.
• cooperx 4y ago
  Pretty sure they just use Yoti to provide the digital government identity verification. Which is also a reason this is being rolled out in Aus/NZ first where Yoti has a bigger footprint here / working with the govs here.
  • cooperx 4y ago
    pricing is here too https://www.yoti.com/business/identity-verification/ https://www.yoti.com/business/identity-verification/ so a very large markup.
• EGreg 4y ago
  Facebook had their Real Names policy since the beginning. Google had it but later apologized: https://slate.com/technology/2014/07/google-plus-finally-ditches-its-ineffective-dangerous-real-name-policy.html https://slate.com/technology/2014/07/google-plus-finally-dit... I remember when Facebook was a private network until they saw Twitter was getting the numbers with public tweets. And they made posts public by default. Now they are copying Twitter again! And btw. This isn't actually very meta at all! But seriously... I know why they all need to do this now. And it has to with the coming botpocalypse. Soon your identity will be tied to your reputation. Which is fine and everything, except it will be on CENTRALIZED BIG TECH SITES. Enjoy your social credit score, plebs!
• zip1234 4y ago
  Part of the reason for this is that paid support has been needed for awhile. Prioritizing support for billions of people is very difficult. It's a lot easier if people want to pay that they can priority support.
  • jxi 4y ago
    What support do people need with Facebook anyway? Been using it since the private days and never really thought of something I would want to contact support for.
• jrnichols 4y ago
  "...get a blue badge, get extra impersonation protection against accounts claiming to be you, and get direct access to customer support" How about not having my account locked for 7/14/30 days for sharing a meme that I find on Facebook? How about not locking my account for a racy image I posted 3 years ago? How about Facebook do a better job of removing the obvious scam accounts like the ones claiming that they're giving away free meals & travel tickets? How about removing the "omg! shocking news video! click here" spam comments that are all over the place? Nope. Sorry Facebook, if you had a product worth paying for, I might consider it. I'm out.
• somsak2 4y ago
  I wonder who will be providing the actual service of identity verification for Meta or if they'll try to do it in-house.
• JustSomeNobody 4y ago
  > get extra impersonation protection against accounts claiming to be you Oh, but not eliminate it? And you want how much? Fu(k right off.
• hnburnsy 4y ago
  how about meta trying veifying all those shady advertisers on its platform and blue checkmark them so I know I am buying a product from a less than shady company.
• juanani 4y ago
  [dead]
• wjessup 4y ago
  what's really great is the back button is hi-jacked with a history of 6+ facebook pages after just a little bit of scrolling. How is this ok?
• walterbell 4y ago
  > subscription service that lets you verify your account with a government ID In this scenario, government ID is like a taxpayer-funded "Layer 1" network that does all the heavy lifting, so that a "Layer 2" network can extract rent for storing a single bit that never changes between initial verification and kill switch/glitch invocation. Should governments impose a tax or monetization limits on corporate citation of government ID? Should governments compete with corporate ID verification services? In blockchain context, https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1626299802156769280.html https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1626299802156769280.html Centralizing power always has predictable outcomes Corporate x2 1. Rent-seeking (aka they will capture some of the networks effects $$$$) 2. Less innovation (they will block competitors) Political x1 1. Power. Raw unlimited power. The person in control of those databases is a God
  • zeroonetwothree 4y ago
    Wait what? Why? The purpose of having governments isn't to extract money from private activity. The purpose is to enable privacy activity to be efficient by providing a baseline level of services that would be difficult or inefficient to produce privately. Having reliable ID provides benefits to many private individuals and corporations, and their economic activity results in taxes that fund the government (likely far in excess of the costs of providing such an ID service).
    • cormacrelf 4y ago
      I pay the equivalent of USD $420 every ten years to have government-issued ID. Facebook wants to charge me $12 a month, for them to look at this ID once. That is $1440 over 10 years. The two services offered are pretty similar: check it once, issue a stamp of approval, then administer that system over time. Why is Facebook's service 3.5x the price?
      • JumpCrisscross 4y ago
        > two services offered are pretty similar: check it once, issue a stamp of approval, then administer that system over time One, Facebook is obviously providing you with a service. Two, your solution to not liking the price of something is to tax it? What?
• kenneth 4y ago
  This is excellent news! I can't wait to sign up. As a VC and someone who's invested in some companies involved in crypto, even though I keep a rather low profile, I constantly have to deal with impersonators on my Facebook and Instagram accounts, trying to scam people. I've tried repeatedly to (1) get Facebook support to shut down the impersonators, and (2) to secure a blue tick so this stops being effective. Meta has dropped the ball on both of these, so I have to deal with this constantly. I will happily pay to avoid this. Second — the ads on Instagram have become overwhelmingly annoying and frequent. I would happily pay for a premium version of IG that gets rid of ads. Hopefully this is that.
  • bugbuddy 4y ago
    Narrator in response to the the last sentence: This was not that. Seriously, it seems there is no mention about this being ad-free tier.
    • kenneth 4y ago
      We don't know much since there's not any details, but in theory at least you're supposed to see less ads on Twitter's premium tier. I figured there's a possibility that a similar policy is in place here. Maybe I'm being too optimistic, it is Meta after all.
• croes 4y ago
  So if you pay you aren't just a user anymore but a customer and Facebook has more liabilities.
• sundvor 4y ago
  The fun thing is how you stop being verified if you cancel your sub after a month, when you've already proved you're a real person by having money change hands, even if you do not change any of your profile information. Money grab exposed, really.
• moneywoes 4y ago
  Well Elon was ahead on this
• dbg31415 4y ago
  “It's free and always will be.”
• pictur 4y ago
  I hope that elon musk will bring the end of social media with the nonsense he started. Come on elon you have to suggest more bullshit.
• bugbuddy 4y ago
  So what if somebody has the exact same name as you and use a profile picture that does not show personally identifiable features like a face? What counts as impersonation here?
• alexzork 4y ago
  Notaries public can verify your identity for much cheaper ($2.00 in Georgia). I got a document for state pension in the mail; it had instructions for creating an online account with a default username and password. Bad idea, right? But to activate the account, I would have to sign a document saying "I have created an online account with <username>" and have it notarized. Social media companies could use notaries to verify identity tomorrow. 3 problems I can see with notarizing documents: 1) Paper signatures / scanned documents. It costs money and time to verify uploaded scanned documents, and users could try to forge documents. Solution: some notaries can sign documents digitally with their publickey: https://www.notarypublicstamps.com/articles/online-notary-digital-certificates-explained/ https://www.notarypublicstamps.com/articles/online-notary-di.... I'm not sure how secure this is or how the certificate authority (which publickeys to trust?) works since I'm not a notary, but it seems promising. 2) Notary fraud: unscrupulous notaries could verify impersonators. But if caught, they would lose their license and also be charged with a felony. 99% of us aren't important enough for someone to take that risk. 3) Users losing control of their account at a later date. Just because someone associates their identity with their account doesn't mean that an imposter could take control of the account at a later point in time. But that's what 2fa is for, and you could still ask the website to take your account down, or go through notary again to fully reset your account. This problem is common to every system that doesn't have 24/7, social-engineering-proof customer support. Anyway, I just think notaries are good way to verify identity. It's also more democratic -- almost anyone without a criminal record can become one with a few hours of training and a small fee. The government has a responsibility to make it accessible because it is required for many government and legal processes. It's worth noting that this is for the US, and notary systems also vary by state. There are some 3rd party companies that seem to standardize the verification process a bit, which probably adds some added fee. Trusting the notary systems of all 50 states, or these 3rd-party companies, can add risk because impostors will use the weakest link. But I think the added volume would bring attention and scrutiny to these systems and hopefully pressure them to become more secure. Lastly, public notaries usually don't make much money. Many people do it to feel civically engaged and help their neighbors, as well as making a few bucks on the side. I think an influx of millions of social media users would either overwhelm or bemuse them. Would be interested to see comments from actual public notaries, what do y'all think?
• acd 4y ago
  I would be willing to pay for a dont sell my personal data privacy subscription.
  • CaptainZapp 4y ago
    The problem with Meta is that you can't trust them to sell you out anyway.
  • awill 4y ago
    But it's Facebook. So you'd pay for it, and there would accidentally be a 'bug', and paying customers would have their data sold anyway.
• Lapsa 4y ago
  that one has to flop, right? don't tell me this is the direction the world is heading
• dorkwood 4y ago
  The customer service part is exciting. Maybe I’ll finally be able to get my Instagram account back after a bug with their software locked me out. Right now I can log in, but the interface is non-functional. I can’t even delete it at the moment.
• wkat4242 4y ago
  > "Get direct access to customer support" They have customer support??? :D But seriously. What's the value add here? Perhaps it's for influencers who post a lot? For me as a user who only follows there's no point then. I don't use FB anymore anyway, only insta. I'd pay for social media IF AND ONLY IF they do the following: - Not datamine me for tracking - Don't show ads - Don't use algorithms to control my feed - just let me follow who I want and show everything they post and add zero 'suggested' content However this is not going to happen of course. They're still going to monetize. So there's no point.
  • ed_mercer 4y ago
    After seeing The Social Dilemma, I agree that algorithms optimized for making money are evil and have to go.
• sander27home 4y ago
  Facebook want to harvest my data for free and now want me to pay them too? Not going to happen. Every online service is asking for money. I will just switch to alternative freemium if I dont care my privacy. If I care, Facebook is on the lowest pecking lists of all my online services....and that is a very long list.
  • tjpnz 4y ago
    I'm sure Zuck will find some dumbfucks (his words, not mine) who are up for that.
  • Fomite 4y ago
    This. If I'm paying for it, I'm the customer. Facebook's customers are its advertisers. I'm not shelling out money to be a value added product.
    • AndrewOMartin 4y ago
      'if you're not paying for the product, you are the product.' is a form of logical implication !A => B (where A is 'paying' and B is 'I'm the product), Your phrase 'If I'm paying for it, I'm the customer' is effectively stating A => !B, which unfortunately does not follow. You can validly infer "if we're not the product we must be paying", but more realistically you'll be both paying and the product (i.e. paying a subscription and receiving ads, a la cable tv).
      • npteljes 4y ago
        This saying was bullshit to begin with. The user is a product also, whether they pay or not. One example is cable television. The fees are huge, and there are lots of adverts. I think that at the end of the day, the natural order is that every entity is trying to maximize the goodness it can get, be that businesses, people, governments, churches, or any other. This is exacerbated with the fact that often it's a competition. If you don't do the level of shady shit that others are doing, you get less goodness, or even fade into irrelevance. Which is why good regulation, and culture matters a lot. Entities are powerless against systemic issues like this, the only way is to change the playing field itself.
• medion 4y ago
  A multi billion dollar company full of some of the brightest minds in the world, and this is what they come up with, basically just copying Twitters strategy? Sigh.
• jarek83 4y ago
  So if I leave Facebook, they will allow others to claim they are me? The only way to protect is to actually have an there account and pay Meta? I mean - are they serious?
• al_be_back 4y ago
  Pay Monthly to Verify your ID once - if anything looks indicative of an industry struggling to monetise, big time; much like the traditional/Print Media went through. The ID issue is an Auth-issue and trivial compared to the bigger issue in Media, namely Content (being: subjective, polarised, spam, nonsense/trash etc).
• fersarr 4y ago
  They should also add a paid tier to whatsapp so that you can finally send high quality pictures and videos...
• philosopher1234 4y ago
  i dont need my facebook. id sooner delete it than pay them.