Facebook to follow Twitter with monthly blue tick charge

Facebook and Instagram have launched a £10 paywall as Mark Zuckerberg copies Elon Musk’s Twitter blue ticks in a dash for paying subscribers.

The feature, rolled out in the UK on Tuesday, will allow users of the social media services to pay £9.99 a month in return for a blue tick verification badge on their profiles.

Meta Verified, the name of the new feature, also gives users access to extra features such as two-factor authentication, which provides extra security against hackers. Users will have to upload a copy of a government-issued ID to the website.

Verified users can also use exclusive stickers across Facebook, Reels and Instagram Stories.

iPhone owners who pay for the new feature inside the Instagram or Facebook app will have to pay £11.99 per month, a result of a surcharge that Apple applies to purchases through its App Store.

Twitter launched a major overhaul of its own blue tick system under Mr Musk’s ownership.

Previously awarded only to users who Twitter’s staff deemed notable, blue ticks were put up for sale to anyone willing to pay $8 (£7), by order of the mercurial billionaire.

Meta’s verified feature was announced in March shortly after the company announced that it was making 10,000 redundancies.

Those layoffs followed 11,000 job cuts announced last November as Mr Zuckerberg’s company struggles with its metaverse vision.

Silicon Valley tech companies have collectively announced hundreds of thousands of redundancies over the past nine months as the end of pandemic-era restrictions weakened demand for consumer-facing tech products and services.

Instagram is also shutting down its London office, despite former deputy prime minister-turned-head of global affairs Sir Nick Clegg making it his base of operations.

Adam Mosseri, the head of Instagram, is expected to relocate back to Meta’s California HQ as around 600 London-based Meta staff lose their jobs amid waves of corporate cost-cutting.