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Desperate times call for desperate measures, which perhaps explains why Meta is pressing ahead with its latest haphazard idea: making users pay.
- Meta and Twitter are officially in the subscription business now.
- The social media companies are chasing subscription dollars as ad revenue declines.
- In doing so, they risk letting their platforms become relevant to a select few users willing to pay.
On Sunday, Mark Zuckerberg – still stinging from his botched metaverse launch – unveiled Meta Verified, a new subscription service costing $12 on web and $15 on iOS and Android. It offers Facebook and Instagram users access to verification, additional security – and perhaps most importantly, boosts their visibility and reach on the platforms.
Meta says there will be no changes to accounts already verified by the familiar blue checkmark, with the service instead primarily targeting content creators looking to grow their followings. An initial release in Australia and New Zealand is expected to be followed by a global rollout. Elon Musk’s Twitter is doing something very similar. (Elon Musk said late Sunday that it was “inevitable” Meta would go Twitter’s way and charge for verified status.)
Sure, users don’t have to part with their money, but choosing not to could mean they suffer a degree of self-sabotage. It looks as though Facebook and Instagram will increasingly amplify the voices of a select number of users who are willing to part with their money — which gives a very different look to services that have evolved into digital town squares.
Silicon Valley’s new pay-to-play services, then, risk making social-media’s great benefits of free speech, global reach, and visibility the preserve of the few – and it’s all because Zuckerberg and Musk need to pad their bottom lines.
Digital ad dollars in decline
Facebook and Twitter are grappling with collapsing ad revenue – more than 90% of the companies’ income streams – as advertisers dramatically reduce spending in fear of an economic downturn.
In Meta’s case, changes made by Apple to its privacy policy in April 2021 have been cited as another key reason its ads business has struggled. The company said in February last year that the changes would cost it more than $10 billion in ad revenue in 2022.
Twitter, meanwhile, suffered a 40% drop in revenue year-over-year, according to a report from Platformer in January, as several advertisers stopped spending on Twitter during Musk’s first few months of chaos after taking the company private.
The timing of the launches of Meta’s and Twitter’s subscription services seems to be no coincidence, then: They’re introducing paid-for services at a time when they’re being squeezed of digital ad revenue.
Meta says its new subscription service is primarily for content creators, but this feels disingenuous because everyone on its service is, in effect, a “content creator.” Posting and following content on Facebook and Instagram help foster engagement, which in turn improves ad-targeting and therefore, drives revenue.
Money for nothing?
A verification feature is important for companies like Facebook and Twitter, which have had checkered histories dealing with misinformation and fake accounts. Ensuring people are who they say they are matters.
By introducing a subscription model to combat issues that have long-plagued the platforms, Zuckerberg and Musk risk alienating legitimate users who can’t afford to pay – and in the midst of an inflation crisis.
Rob Leathern, ex-senior director of product management at Facebook, argued in a LinkedIn post that there are many great reasons to launch something like this as paid, because ID verification costs money and is not 100% accurate.
That may well be true. The legacy system of verification suffers its own share of problems – with users seeking verification often being rejected by a system that felt like it lacked coherence and made arbitrary decisions about who should and shouldn’t be verified.
Even ex-Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey acknowledged the verification system was broken as far back as 2017, as it became clear that verification was being “interpreted as an endorsement or an indicator of importance” as opposed to authenticating “identity and voice.”
But the cost of figuring out the verification problem should be carried by the platforms themselves, given the basic function it’s meant to provide to users. Charging for it illustrates a clear misunderstanding Zuckerberg has of Facebook and its users: Facebook is responsible for vetting who gets access to its platform, not users themselves.
Just 0.2% of Twitter users in the US had signed up for Twitter Blue, Musk’s subscription service, by the end of January. It’s a sign that users see little value in what they’re being asked to pay for.
Meta may say it’s serving its users with its subscription launch, but it shouldn’t be surprised if it’s met with the same tepid response as Twitter Blue. Indeed, Meta seems only to be serving its own financial needs.
