$0.99/mo for emojis. $1.99/ to show your support for various causes. $3.99/ for sports teams. $4.99/ for ID verification. $0.49/ of your red cross badge goes to earthquake survivors.
Like virtual hats, but for social media.
Right now it’s a property not advertised to network participants. But in the near future you might seem the following above unverified accounts posting about controversial topics
“Careful. This person could not be identified. They may be a bot or falsifying their identify to misrepresent opinion”
At which point, the value of verification goes up. Maybe.
It is valuable to Facebook to maintain a healthy pltform. But is it really worth $15 a month to you to broadcast this to others?
Unless the culture of the platform shifts to a point where non-verified accounts are considered second-class, the only reason to pay this is basically as a status symbol. In which case, I think the tiered approach makes more sense. And maybe "Facebook Gold" for people who want to pay even more for a badge....
Twitter had their checkmarks established as an artificially constrained status symbol you couldn't buy with money... and then, under Musk, they altered the terms of the deal by saying you have to pay, but you get tangible perks in terms of platform features, visibility of your content, etc. Unless Facebook wants to do that, I can't see people paying this much on their own...
But in principle, I think networks should charge their users and provide services, and identity is the most-in-need service the internet lacks.
Will users pay for identity? Probably not, but one can dream.
Twitter is different because I assume most people haven’t met their followers IRL.
Example:
My MIL is 'friends' with a prominent US based surgeon who is also a leading founder in a biotech company. He convinced her to buy stock in said biotech company, when its price was peaking. Of course it was a classic pump and dump and the value plummeted a few weeks later.
Would identity guard rails have saved her? Possibly not. But telling her "if you don't see a verified XYZ they are a scammer" might move the needle.