The parent firm, Meta, has announced that users of Instagram and Facebook may now pay for a blue tick verification.

Meta Verified will cost $11.99 per month on the web and $14.99 per month for iPhone users.

This week, it will be accessible in Australia and New Zealand.

According to Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, this change would strengthen the reliability of social networking programs.

The decision comes after Elon Musk, Twitter’s owner, established the premium Twitter Blue membership in November 2022.

The paid subscription service offered by Meta is not currently available to companies, but anybody can pay for verification.

“Blue ticks,” or badges, have been employed as a means of authenticating prominent accounts.

According to a statement on the Meta website, paying users will receive a blue badge, greater exposure of their messages, protection against impersonators, and faster access to customer care.

The business gave assurances that the update would not affect already verified accounts, but did highlight that certain smaller users who get verified will become more visible as a result of the premium function.

Giving paying users access to a blue tick has produced problems for other social media networks in the past.

In November of last year, Twitter temporarily suspended its pay-for-verification tool after users began fraudulently obtaining the badge in order to pose as famous individuals or companies.

Meta stated that users’ Instagram and Facebook identities would need to be identical to those on a government-issued ID document and that users will also need to have a profile photo that clearly displays their face in order to be verified.

Subscription models are also used by other services including Reddit, YouTube, and Discord.

While Mr. Zuckerberg has promised that the function would “soon” be available in additional countries, Meta has not yet revealed when this will occur.

As a result of overinvestment during the Covid-19 outbreak, the business announced 11,000 layoffs in November.

Mr. Zuckerberg claimed at the time that he had projected an uptick in Meta’s growth based on its success in overcoming the epidemic, but this did not occur.

“Many people predicted this would be a permanent acceleration,” he wrote, “I did too, so I made the decision to significantly increase our investments.”

Instead, he said “macroeconomic downturn” and “increased competition” caused revenue to be much lower than expected.

“I got this wrong, and I take responsibility for that,” he said at the time.