Everything
If you’ve been toying with the idea of shutting down your Facebook account, maybe now is the time to do it after founder and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that they will be soon introducing tiered membership, akin to the current Twitter Blue Tick method.
Yes, the very successful model of paid verification that had no setbacks or potential downsides at all is now coming to your Facebook so your racist uncle can boast…that he paid $20 to use something that he used to use for free?
In a statement made on Facebook earlier today, The Zuck confirmed that Facebook users in Australia and New Zealand will be the guinea pigs for a new kind of content model.
Starting this week, Facebook users can opt into a new product known as Meta Verified, “a subscription service that lets you 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.”
If this doesn’t read as a massive warning sign that the invisible faces behind the Facebook product are clearly aware that issues such as identity theft and a complete lack of support are major pitfalls of the social media platform’s current user experience then…how much more evidence do you need?
It’s particularly galling that they’re actually making you pay for the bare minimum of service. As it currently stands, if you have a problem with anything from harassment to fake accounts, you’d probably get more support at a fully digitalised Woolies check out than contacting the so called customer support team at Facebook.
That Zuckerberg thinks this is the way forward for his social media platform despite the very clear and on-going issues that Blue Tick created for Twitter and Elon Musk…
Remember the days when we all thought Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk and their ilk were some kind of next level thinkers? Lol. Those were simpler times.
