Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, will introduce a paid subscription offering for users to verify their accounts, according to an announcement by CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
The service will start at $11.99 per month and comes after Twitter’s Elon Musk made a comparable move.
“This new feature is about increasing authenticity and security across our services,” Zuckerberg wrote in his Facebook account.
According to the Facebook chief, Meta Verified will debut this week in Australia and New Zealand. It will allow users to “obtain a blue badge by verifying their accounts with a government-issued ID, benefit from increased protection against impersonation by accounts pretending to be them, and have direct access to customer support.”
Meta’s move comes in the wake of Twitter’s relaunch of its user verification system, which occurred after the platform was purchased by Tesla CEO Elon Musk in October of last year.
The most recent version of Twitter Blue enables users to obtain the platform’s blue check mark through a monthly subscription, while also providing subscribers with additional capabilities such as the ability to edit tweets and upload longer videos.
Earlier this year, Facebook drew the ire of some users when it lifted the two-year suspension of Donald Trump’s accounts  due to the events of the January 6, 2021, attack at the Capitol.Â
Trump’s official Facebook and Instagram accounts currently have over 34 million followers and more than 23 million followers, respectively.
