Opinion After Twitter, Meta announces paid verification: The challenges of the new Big Tech model

A hotly debated subject about these platforms has always been who gets “verified” on them. Verified accounts typically display a blue badge or a checkmark next to the account name, indicating that the account has been verified by the platform as belonging to the individual or brand that it claims to. It is usually granted to high-profile individuals, public figures, and brands at risk of impersonation.

All these years, the bargain that we’ve struck with these platforms is that we share our data and attention in exchange for (monetarily) free access to their services. That seems set for revamp. Meta (the parent company of Facebook and Instagram), like Twitter before, has announced it will be charging for verification (via the launch of their “Meta verified” and “Twitter Blue” offerings, respectively), and that anyone can get the blue badge as well as access to a few other product perks and services with the swipe of a card.

It was in June of 2009, that Twitter launched its “Verified Accounts” feature, the first social media platform to do so. This came in the wake of Kanye West’s criticism of the platform and legal action against the company by baseball player Tony La Russa over impersonators. The original rationale, as stated by the company, was that a blue-tick account signified that the platform had been “in contact with the person or entity the account is representing and verified that it is approved”. In 2016, when the platform announced a public application process to grant verified status, the wording evolved to “if it is determined to be of public interest” by the service.

The purpose of verification was to increase the credibility and trustworthiness of handles on the platform and to protect users from fraudulent or impersonated accounts, instead of signifying noteworthiness and popularity. This shift in strategy and the opening up of verification to, theoretically, all their users reiterates the original reason for instituting verification. This shift has three clear benefits and concerns, both for users as well as the platforms.

First, the drawbacks: The process of online verification of users has always been broken and hard to scale. While it may be reasonable for platform providers to charge a small fee to offset the costs involved in delivering verification, pricing remains critical here. Verification makes the ecosystem more trustworthy. Treating it solely as a profit-generating endeavour is shortsighted. The concern is that the effort might fail at the prices announced (around 10-15 USD a month) potentially resulting in upset consumers, limited revenue, and a drop in trust and credibility.

Secondly, there are valid concerns that paid verification could create a two-tiered system, where only those who can afford to pay for the service are able to access the benefits of verification. This could lead to a situation where verified accounts, by virtue of being seen as more legitimate, are afforded far higher engagement and reach even if the content they produce is not necessarily of higher quality or accuracy.

Additionally, for a lot of these platforms, this rollout is the first attempt at a paid consumer-facing product. This means the recurring collection of a subscription fee. That brings with it several onerous and continuous policy-based, operational and legal obligations of its own. For example, such a rollout would mandate the setting up of a payment infrastructure, abiding by local laws and relevant local regulations pertaining to finance, taxes and transaction in all the geographies they operate in — another area of personal user data to protect from cyber fraud, deep work with payment service providers and banking authorities and so much more.

On the plus side, especially from a platform perspective — it is important to note that in some jurisdictions, proving the identity of your users online is increasingly being driven by local legislative mandates. For example, in India, the government has mandated that social media platforms enable its users to voluntarily verify their accounts and provide such accounts with visible marks of verification, which has led to some platforms like Koo and Linkedin offering voluntary verification options in the country. Additionally, currently, there is a black market where people can supposedly pay to get verified, which undermines the integrity of the verification process. By providing a legitimate paid verification service, social media companies can eliminate this black market and ensure that the verification process is fair and transparent.

Secondly, these offerings can serve as a source of revenue, especially during a period of acute economic uncertainty, while reducing their overwhelming dependence on advertising. With more verified accounts on the platform, users can be confident of the authenticity of the identity of those they might interact with online. This, in turn, could lead to increased user engagement and retention.

Finally, in the past, social media companies have been accused of being inconsistent and unfair in their approach to verification, with some accounts purportedly receiving the blue checkmark despite not meeting the criteria, while others who do meet the criteria are left out. By introducing a paid service, companies can remove the human element from the process and reduce reputational risks and operational friction. In my two years at Twitter, I was always in awe of how systematic and process driven every aspect of the job was, helping eliminate discretion and inconsistency. While this also extended to something as subjective as processing requests for verification, there would be cases where one would have to take a call if a particular handle met all the criteria as spelt out publicly for the blue badge. Paid verification access eliminates this element of discretion.

While paid verification offers an extra layer of protection for creators and generates valuable revenue for these platforms, it also raises concerns about fairness and accessibility. As these companies and their services continue to evolve, it will be important to strike a balance between generating much-needed revenue, while providing a valuable service to billions of users and ensuring that the system is fair and accessible to all.

The writer, formerly with Twitter India, is founder of Proficy, Public Policy India and has worked in Parliament in a public policy role