Oluwanifemi Ojo
The Chief Executive Officer of Meta, Mark Zuckerberg announced its plan to begin a paid subscription service on Instagram and Facebook, which spurred mixed reactions from users.
The announcement to monitise Facebook and Instagram verification which was made on his Facebook account on Sunday evening now has about 300k likes and 60k comments as of the time of this report.
Zuckerberg said that the Meta Verified, which will begin in Australia and New Zealand this week, will allow users “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,” he wrote.
Reacting to this post, Mark Nathaniel Hardy, a Facebook user said, ” this really should just be part of the core product, the user should not have to pay for this. Clearly, it is known by Meta that this is filling a need, why profit additionally from it ? Not sure how that is supporting authenticity. Be transparent as to the purpose of the feature.”
Zuckerberg responded to this user stating, “We already provide protection and some support for everyone. But verifying government IDs and providing direct access to customer support from millions and billions of people costs a significant amount of money. Subscription fees will cover this and will pace how many people sign up so we’ll be able to ensure quality as we scale.”
Meanwhile another Facebook user, Jeannette Olaonipekun supported the idea and made a comment that reads, “That’s very interesting! I will probably pay for this. Welcome to Canada 🇨🇦 ”
A Nigerian user, Olaife Ilori said, ” Welldone Mark! Great development. We ask that you prioritize Nigeria 🇳🇬 too as many pages are currently being shadow-banned. In this prioritization, kindly put into consideration less subscription for non profit organisations”
“Similar to what Musk is doing at Twitter ?” Aaron Ghirardelli, another user stated.
Also, there were reactions on the verified Twitter page of The Punch where some users stated they would deactivate their accounts or uninstall the apps.
@MKOSALEM responded to the tweet “Deactivation mode activated.”
“Facebook? Instagram? Who still dey use them? My last logged in was 2021 ( 2 years ago ), ” @itz_AY commented.
@hangelgoodsong reponded to the tweet saying, “N9k at least! Will Facebook and Instagram give a user eternal life? Good thing uninstall is still working?”
