OPINION: Meta, Twitter Are Ruining Social Media As We Knew It. Why Should You 'Pay' For It?

Until 2019, Facebook claimed that the platform and all its services were “free and always will be.” However, those days appear to be long gone.

Meta, the parent company of social media giants Facebook and Instagram, has decided to take a leaf out of Twitter CEO Elon Musk’s book and has announced a new service called ‘Meta Verified’. This will let users earn a verified badge beside their profile names, and get more features such as “more protection from impersonation,” if they agree to pay a monthly subscription fee.  

“More protection from impersonation” — shouldn’t that be one of the top priorities for any social media platform to ensure for all its users, irrespective of additional payment? Claiming that paying users will get more security inadvertently raises this question: Are non-paying users then not safe on social media platforms anymore?

The Elon Musk Problem

When it comes to social media ethos, Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook was a trendsetter when it first came to life way back in 2004. Be it making new friends from across the world (and poking them occasionally for giggles), or those endless feeds of posts from the accounts you follow, Facebook truly defined how social media platforms should feel for well over a decade. 

Even when Zuckerberg changed the company’s name to Meta, to highlight the company’s focus on everything metaverse, there were scores of other companies already working and taking great strides in the field of augmented and virtual reality (AR and VR). Despite that, the popularity of Facebook’s switch to Meta led to everything from news headlines to corporate giants quickly taking to the metaverse like it's the next best thing since sliced bread. 

However, with the announcement of Meta Verified, it appears that Meta, too, has become yet another “Us Too” tech firm simply jumping on popular bandwagons, without truly defining a new development in the space.

And, perhaps, Elon Musk is to blame for this.

The eccentric entrepreneur became the CEO of Twitter after a hostile $44-billion takeover in October 2022. Soon after, he brought in several changes to the microblogging company, ranging from firing top executives to monetising elements that were earlier free.

In November last year, Musk announced a revamped Twitter Blue plan, which stated that if you paid $8 per month or $84 per year, you will get the much-coveted blue ‘verified’ checkmark beside your profile name and early access to certain features, such as the much-demanded ‘Edit Tweet’ (which has only been rolled out in Canada, Australia, and New Zealand so far).

In case you weren’t aware, getting a verified blue tick on your profile used to be free earlier. All you needed to do was submit a government-approved ID, some official URLs in certain cases, and a few more pieces of information, wait for Twitter’s verification process to get completed, and et voilà! You have your blue badge next to your profile name, letting other users know that you are indeed a verified user with official credentials. 

The same was the case with Facebook and Instagram. 

Earlier, to get a verified badge beside your profile name, all a user needed to do was to click on Request Verification from settings, go through a similar process as Twitter, and gain a verification badge after background checks are completed. 

However, it now appears that just like Twitter, Meta wants you to pay $11.99 per month (on the Web) and $14.99 per month (on iOS and Android) to get the much-coveted verification badges. 

Musk himself summed up the entire Meta-following-Twitter scenario perfectly in just one word: “Inevitable.” 

Where Meta (Sort Of) Trumped Twitter

Now, as Twitter decided to monetise its blue ticks, it also announced that accounts that were already verified would lose their badges if they decided not to pay. This led to a huge uproar on the platform, with several celebrities threatening to leave the platform instead of paying, including the likes of author Stephen King or actress Lynda Carter.

Meta decided to play safe here. “As we test and learn, there will be no changes to accounts on Instagram and Facebook that are already verified based on prior requirements, including authenticity and notability,” the company clearly stated in its announcement blog. 

‘Verified’ Fake Accounts

When Musk rolled out paid Twitter verification badges, the idea was to reduce the number of fake/bot accounts on the platform. However, the plan eventually backfired. It led to a spate of ‘verified’ fake accounts, including the likes of LeBron James and even Jesus Christ. 

There were even regular accounts with blue tick badges, spreading all sorts of misinformation on the platform. This proved to be quite a handful for journalists and researchers, who rely on Twitter for information or breaking news. Without a proper label of ‘parody’ or ‘joke’ on posts, it was nearly impossible to tell real from fake on Twitter. 

Who Needs ‘Verified’ Facebook Accounts Anyways?

While Twitter is a platform that is handy for data or news, Facebook and Instagram are more lifestyle/activities-oriented platforms where people share what they have been up to lately. So, if you are a regular user, you may not need a verified badge at all. 

However, it is the content creators who will have to deal with the most impact from the newly announced verification plans. As mentioned earlier, Facebook and Instagram primarily serve content creators and celebrities who wish to promote their works, products/services, and sponsored deals to users. 

For creators, apart from the verified badges, Meta has also announced handy elements such as access to a “real person for common account issues,” “increased visibility and reach,” and notably, “more protection from impersonation”. This brings us to the most pertinent question. Why are social media companies asking us to pay for services that are supposed to be part of the sign-up package in the first place?

Making Users Pay

Until 2019, Facebook claimed that the platform and all its services were “free and always will be.” However, those days appear to be long gone, and social media platforms are now asking users to pay for services that were expected to be a default offering. 

Access to a real person to help address account issues, increased visibility and reach — all these were supposed to be offered to all users for free. When detailing the “more protection from impersonation” aspect, Meta said that verified accounts will get access to “proactive account monitoring for impersonators who might target people with growing online audiences.” 

Call me a romantic, but I’d expect my account to be secure from any bad actor — and to have access to help when I need it — when I sign up for any social media platform. Not having all that is akin to attending a musical concert but not being able to watch all the songs because they are behind a paywall. 

Additionally, one would expect algorithms of social media platforms to treat all accounts and all content equally. The fact that Meta said that paying more money to get “increased visibility and reach” is concerning, to say the least. Are we to believe that Facebook has now become similar to Tinder, where you gain more chances to find a match if you pay extra bucks for Tinder Plus? 

On top of everything, Twitter has recently announced that Twitter Blue users are now the only ones who can access the SMS-based two-factor authentication (2FA) security process. If you wish to make sure your account doesn’t get accessed for malintent via SMS messages, you will have to pay $8 per month. 

The reason? Musk said this was done because Twitter was getting “spammed by phone companies” for $60 million per year of “fake 2FA SMS messages.”

Ever since the Covid bubble burst for tech firms, and due to added macroeconomic woes led by inflation and the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war, companies are leaving no stone unturned to cut costs. While that has severe repercussions like layoffs of thousands of employees across the globe, that also leads to companies trying to figure out more ways to earn money from users. 

Social media used to be a place to hang out and catch up. Now, it has become an ocean of user data for advertisers to fish from, with firms making the most to squeeze that extra penny out of users’ pockets. 

If this continues, we may very well see more paid elements on social media platforms. You may have to pay for tweets, shell out some extra bucks to post longer videos or more photos, or use better image filters on Instagram. What was once a digital playground for like-minded personalities to connect and socialize, is now an uninspiring sinkhole marked by the “Us Too” mentality. 

For now, I’m awaiting the arrival of fake ‘Jesus Christ’ to turn up on Meta platforms as well.