Meta has added a new proviso into the requirements for its Meta Verified paid verification offering, which seems designed to stop scammers from impersonating others, or selling profiles that they’ve built up over time.
Over on the Facebook Help page for Meta Verified eligibility, Meta recently added this new element into the broader set of regulations for creator verification.
“[To subscribe to Meta Verified for creators, you need to] not exceed the number of times you can make changes to your account within a certain time period prior to applying for verification (examples: changes to profile name, profile picture, username, location, or account type).”
This has always been a consideration, but Meta has now made this a definitive parameter, so it can reject applicants to its paid verification program if they’ve made too many changes to their profile name, image, or other details over time.
That should help to catch out scammers who are using dummy profiles to establish a presence in the app, or assume the identity of another person or entity. Meta does have other qualifiers that also help to catch this, but by implementing new rules around these elements, that’ll make it harder for people to cheat the system, and mislead users with a verified tick.
Which now means a lot less than it used to. Given that anybody can now buy a blue checkmark, the actual value of that symbol is far less than what it once was, which has always been the conflicting element about such offers, that in selling credibility, you’re also de-valuing it.
X is the leader on this, with so many random profiles now displaying a blue check. What had been a measure of credibility in the app is now a marker of support for Elon Musk more than anything else, and as such, there’s not really any reason to buy a checkmark, in itself, for most brands and or users.
But Meta Verified and X Premium do also provide additional benefits, including reach boosts and expanded exposure opportunities. So there are other reasons for paying, but as a measure of influence and authenticity, it’s not what it once was.
The fact that Meta’s adding in additional provisos like this only reinforces this point, that questionable entities have been able to use this as a vector to scam and dupe users.
But with Meta making additional revenue from the program, it seems keen to push ahead, despite any such concerns.
Meta still hasn’t shared any official data on Meta Verified take-up, but taking a look at Meta’s Q4 2024 performance numbers, it looks like Meta’s probably sold around 7 million or so subscriptions to Meta Verified, with its “Other” revenue stream increasing by around $300 million per quarter since the product was launched in Q2 2023.
Using basic math, that would equate to an additional $100 million in revenue per month in this segment. Dividing that by the average cost of Meta Verified ($13), you get about 7.7 million subscriptions. That’d be a ballpark estimate, as there are various other factors to consider, but that also makes sense, based on Meta’s overall userbase.
Meta has almost 4 billion users across its family of apps (Facebook, Messenger, IG, and WhatsApp), and 7 million or so subscribers would equate to less than 1% of its total user base, which is about the same rate that most social subscription offerings are seeing.
So that’s probably around what Meta’s seeing, and an extra $100 million per month, and rising, is definitely worth Meta sticking with the program, especially now that the value of the checkmark has been eroded anyway.
It just has to negate misuse, with enhanced rules and measures like this.
