The interesting implications of user verification as a product

Meta is to copy Elon Musk’s move at Twitter and has announced it will start charging for a verification mark on Instagram and Facebook profiles, a process that will require some form of official ID and will cost $11.99 per month for computers and $14.99 on iOS and Android. In principle, at least while the idea is being tested, this will have no impact on those of us who already had a checkmark previously for other reasons.

The move is an important moment in the social networking environment: users are no longer simply commodities to be resold to advertisers, and instead are customers who pay for subscriptions based on the interest that their positioning on the platform can generate for them. The verification mark is not something everybody will want, and is instead for those who understand that having it can affect the credibility of their presence or, in general, of the business model they develop on the social network in question.

Does it make sense to ask users to pay to be verified? As Musk has shown, the procedure requires safeguards to prevent anyone from being verified with the identity they want, but beyond that, we are simply talking about ensuring that whoever is behind a profile on a social network is who they claim to be. In practice, this “privilege” is also accompanied by other benefits, such as…