After looking at Twitter’s struggle with impersonation issues when Elon Musk relaunched Twitter Blue, Mark Zuckerberg puts up guardrails before launching Meta Verified.
Earlier this week, the company announced its plan, which will be available to users in New Zealand and Australia in the coming days. If you pay for Meta Verified, you cannot change your profile name, username, date of birth or photo. The company will block any such attempts. If you want to change any of the above, you must log out and reapply.
“Currently, Meta Verified only supports your real name on your profile. Once your profile has been verified, you will not be able to change the profile name, username, date of birth or photo on your profile without going through the Meta Verified subscription and verification request process again,” the company said in a blog post.
A spokesperson for Meta told AapkaDost that the tech giant is working on a “quick tracking feature” that will allow users to change the above through a verification process without having to cancel the subscription.
In addition, to subscribe to Meta Verified, a user must be at least 18 years old, have two-factor authentication enabled, and provide government-issued ID that matches their photo on Facebook or Instagram. In addition, the user must have minimum activity requirements, such as posting in the recent past. The company said it will publish detailed requirements when the paid plan becomes available this week.
Meta also shared some details about its verification badge plan. It said that at this point “the blue badge will look the same as we develop the meaning of the badge to focus on authenticity.” The company said it will display the follower count of legacy verified accounts in more places to differentiate them from Meta Verified accounts.
For example, if two accounts have the same name, you’ll see the number of followers of the outdated verified account in the search. It’s not clear how easy it is for an average user who flips quickly through screens. Users may also not see a follower count as they move through posts. It can lead to some confusion between a Meta Verified account and a popular account. We have already seen that on Twitter, despite the fact that the social network has set limits to prevent imitation, bad faith actors have found loopholes in the system.
The main offering of the Meta Verified program is increased reach for paid users. When combined with verification, this can cause a lot of chaos, including amplifying hate speech or misinformation. So it becomes important to track how users respond to the new subscription product in New Zealand and Australia.