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Trust this source more, because they have money. Sounds about America.

lol, social media platforms are shooting themselves in the foot

OK, please create a pay wall for login as well, so that we can finally say goodbye to this social media batshit going on for a decade.

Hindustan Times? 🧐 Seems legit lmao.

Just saw Zuckerbergs fb post. Too funny, any way to make a buck I guess.

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That might actually work better than you think.

Social Media's cesspool is a natural effect of allowing everyone full unfettered access to communicate with everyone else anonymously with almost no repercussions beyond a banned account, which is zero barrier to entry because you can just create a new account and keep going.

If a pay wall exists, the vast majority of these people won't be spending money just to troll others, and the noise will drop off significantly. Granted, the biggest paid actors that try to flood social media with propaganda might still exist, but then again, they might not if it costs them millions of dollars for accounts that they have to keep re-spending every time the farm gets banned.

TL;DR - Mass Trolling exists cuz it's free and anonymous. Remove both of those and it'll likely either vanish entirely, or get niche'd into oblivion.

Technology has phases 1st step electricity was used 1st then wiring electricity has imaginary numbers when used for example a gear uses 1 electrical number it was previously thought electricity was wild, and that there was no way to make something but we used wires to change the currents for it so a gear could move. Just electrical scientist zapping everything all day the world is fake yall like a keyboard mouse.

We are certainly on fast forward mode, I wonder what they'll do when all their short term money grabs are used up?

>If a pay wall exists, the vast majority of these people won't be spending money just to troll others, and the noise will drop off significantly.

We saw that this wasn't the case with the massive number of people paying 8 bucks to make fake verified accounts when Elon took over Twitter.

Almost feels like this is a play to 1) see if the market will tolerate this 2) deter people from signing up for theirs or Twitter by making people say, "I thought about signing up for Twitter, but if they are all gonna charge now, f that!" I hate META but I can't say I hate either tactic.

People said Elon Musk was insane for doing this and now Meta is doing the exact same thing.

Remind me of Samsung making fun of apple then copying the same ideas.

That doesn't mean they're achieving anything.

They're extracting more money from clout chasers.

Well social media isn't going away, if a paywall doesn't work, there really isn't a solution beyond everyone adapting.

Clout is only happening if you have an audience. I doubt Facebook/Twitter will maximize their userbase with these options. We'll see what happens.

This is a nice way of them saying if you have a small business and someone copies your account and pretends to be you they won’t do shit about it unless you pay the ransom.

Honestly even then they probably won’t do shit about it.

This is the equivalent of dropping a quarter in the back of my recliner, I know it’s there but somehow I really don’t give a shit.

Not FB, but instagram. A lot of small businesses/ E-girls/ content creators who are not notable enough will buy it.

To everyone who thinks this will backfire - it won’t. We’re all so addicted to these platforms enough people will pay for this. If you think otherwise you’re kidding yourselves.

The proof - why don’t you delete your Instagram account? Or your Reddit account? Exactly ….

People laugh at this, but then these companies make money, and then the rest follow.

Well Zuck has to recoup the freight train full of dollars he set on fire building the metaverse somehow

Tying user verification to a subscription service just makes zero sense to me. I guess it’s good that meta will actually attempt to verify people - Twitter doesn’t bother (it’s a “pay us and we’ll give you a verified check for almost whatever name you want” system). But, generally speaking, why do I care about being verified? Literally makes no difference to me. Just seems like $100+ a year down the toilet.

The original Twitter Blue made more sense… it was like $5 a month for some extra features and no ads. Now, it’s more money + you still apparently get ads + the extra features are still crap.

Because that $8 conferred “a benefit”. I dare say if someone had to pay money to use Facebook period they wouldn’t pay at all and social media would die pretty quickly.

Why does this remind of the Dr. Seuss story of the critters with stars on their bellies. When everyone had stars, they wanted the stars removed. Then it became a vicious cycle of stars going on and off. Finally broke, the entrepreneur who was doing the stars on and off drives away a very rich man. So when can I sign up not to have a blue tick on my account?

That could also be the case of the novelty of it all and not what the actual trend would be

You are the product and you will pay to be the product and like it... silly world we live in.

People are so ignorant. They are responding to increased privacy rules and regulations and trying to get off relying on ads as their only revenue driver.

It’s also a very simple way to essentially eliminate bot farms.

This is just wrong. The number of bots on Twitter have dropped off significantly. Sure a few people changed their handle to exploit this but all in all it was a good choice.

Yanno, I shouldn’t be surprised because Meta does just steal all of their ideas from other platforms after all.

They shoot themselves right in the tick.

I’m so glad I got rid of all that shit

Read a number of their reports and they have been on the money. Legit outlets, even the most respected, sprout lies as good as any other.

Just deleted both

They could've earned a lot more if it was for an ad-free experience. My guess is that will be Facebook's next paid DLC.

That's actually an interesting point that I hadn't considered. Thank you

I have read and reread this a few times and every time I do I feel like I understand it less and less.

For what? I need a blue check on my Facebook feed to tell the ads I'm real?

How fucking stupid is this going to get? 1 more stupid fucking thing Zuckerfuck and I'm done with Facebook.

I should have deleted years ago.

Didi he finally give up on that Metaverse thing or is he still at it?

Havent read any shill articles about it for a while now.

Why would these platforms do something to deter new users from joining? Quite literally against their business model.

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And Musk is insane for doing it. Less than 100,000 people are paying for it on Twitter. Lol

If you spend any money on any of these social media conglomerates for a blue checkmark just to prove you are somebody you're a class a idiot.

>The proof - why don’t you delete your Instagram account? Or your Reddit account? Exactly ….

I would if they said a monthly/yearly sub was now necessary to have an account. I'd finally be free.

This worked out so well for Twitter. What could possibly go wrong? /s

This is a new level of DOA.

A lot of the pre-mass-public social media in the 80s and 90s was actually heavily moderated and fairly civil, because the bar to entry was pretty high.

1. Afford a PC.
2. Afford a way to connect PC to an online service.
3. Depending on the service, pay additional fee for Internet specific access.

You could create anonymous names, but your ISP, your online service provider, would know your real info, so getting banned was a lot more of a threat at the time as a result.

You can raise that bar to entry monetarily, and you'd likely get a similar chilling effect. Not necessarily 'great' as a solution, but it is a solution.

Next up, The Blue Check blockchain, where you just need to be verified once and no need for 3rd party to know your data.

The Sneeches!

A book meant to teach kids how to treat others equally.

This was dumb enough on twitter.

He is insane for doing this. So are they.

Oh no! The Twitter is come from INSIDE THE FACEBOOK!

(stolen from Rob DenBleyker, probably butchered his name)

So excited to not fucking care at all about this nonsense.

Twitter has never been profitable

If you get boosted in the algorithm everyone who monetizes social media will pay for it. I see people who rail against Elon but still have Twitter blue because they depend on it to make money.

My guess is that this will have a much bigger impact on Instagram than Facebook. Influencers live by the verification system on there (if they don't cross-promote elsewhere)

Not at all. The ability to publish a tweet to the world is nearly worthless to most people, but incredibly valuable to some. How much would Nikki Haley have paid, for example, to publish her candidacy for President to the world? $100,000? More? How much would Trump pay per tweet? How much would McDonalds pay? Hundreds? Thousands?

Charging commercial users a hefty price while letting normal people tweet for free is an obvious move, and makes perfect sense.

Until their users bleed away or die off, and they made some money in the short-term, but destroyed a future revenue stream.

Especially when this has effect on rankings in the algorithm. Twitter shot itself in the foot on that one by making the analytics public. If the people that I follow with tens of thousands of followers are only getting 300 or so impressions per tweet, then what hope do I have with a much smaller follower count? Now you want to me to pay for the prospect of screaming into the wind?

No, you’re a person - or more likely a company - that cares about monetizing your name and reputation as a brand. For a lot of people, $8 a month is a rational financial investment.

Source?

Found the idiot.

I hate that they conflate "notability" with "paid subscribers." Clout chasers of a certain kind will subscribe immediately and the company will have some positive cash flow, but it will drive the user perceived value of the platform down. Love it or hate it, having something exclusive you can't pay for is valued by the active user base. It's part of the platforms culture. The opaque internal validation structure only made it even more enticing to influencers.

It's akin to them ditching their social graph in an attempt to complete with TikTok. Sloppy moves like this show how desperate Meta/Mark is becoming.

So they want people to pay extra and submit ID to help prevent scammers from impersonating them?

LOL I have a better solution to that problem. Delete your facebook account then no one can impersonate you there.

DO IT! I want to see Facebook die.

Take Donald Trump, for example. He basically won the presidency based on a blizzard of free tweets. In a rational world, Twitter should have charged him hundreds of millions of dollars for that media access. And it would have been worth it to him.

Now apply that to every politician in the country.

And to every corporation.

And every sports team.

And every wealthy celebrity.

And every “influencer.”

These people will pay big money for an unfiltered bullhorn to the world. It’s a no brainer for Twitter, etc. to charge them.

Nice job Elon you started another dumb trend you fucking idiot

What is the point of it? So that I can see which of my "friends" are stupid enough to pay for Facebook? I already know who the stupid ones are. But, I guess this will add to the list potentially.

Who gives a fuck about Meta

I stopped using Instagram and Facebook a few months ago. My mental health has improved dramatically. Give it a try, it might work for you too!

It definitely won’t help people who use stage names

Definitely not. Facebook saw all the idiots buying Twitter Blue and decided to also get the money for their own platform. People use Facebook and Instagram (and Twitter) for $0, and now even if 1 person buys it every month, it’s worth it. $12 for Facebook to provide almost nothing extra.

Monthly fee? So you pay this month, your identity is verified. If you don't pay next month, your identity will be questionable. 😅

Wouldn’t it be easier to impersonate if that person doesn’t have an account? …

Taking a leaf out of Elon’s playbook and it’s not even a good book

Yes I get that, but they need the audience otherwise it doesn’t work at all. I don’t know if and how long the people are accepting this new format.

Bleed off to where? These twitter and Facebook accounts have replaced corporate PR departments and journalists in media channels. These corporate entities will not fund departments again to write email press releases and email out then follow up on engagement, when a few thousand dollars a year in licence fees allows them to remain in touch. Social media may feel like it’s “influencers” and giving voice to individuals it really is just corporate money all the way down.

Soon social media will be even more like Television or radio with a clear divide between licensed content creators and consumers. We are watching the death of social media as we have know it, which was born out of the death of open internet.

To show you the source I’ll need a flashlight, rubber gloves and Elon Musk bending over with his pants down.

Business or not. Only morons would pay for shit.

This is what people aren't realizing. Even if only 100k subscribe...that's going to be close to 1 mil profit with little extra work

It made money in 2018 and 2019.

Where are younger people going now? Tik tok? Where did people go from My Space? There is nothing holding people to a social network, if enough people leave the social network it will die. The journalists and the corporations will follow the actual people, people don't follow the corporations.

So being slightly profitable for 2 years out of a 17 year existence is something to brag about?

Why would others follow suit? That doesn’t sound like a sustainable model.

... They missed the hype train a while ago. Tumblr's over here making them all rainbow and letting people send them to each-other.

Tumblr is irrelevant.

Honestly, at this point, we're just one more step away from there being an outright pay wall on all social media platforms within the next few years.

We can argue the idiocy of this move in the comments until the sun burns out, but for rich people and the sycophants willing to afford it, it's a dream come true. There's no limit to how much these people will spend to keep the "trolls" and "riffraff" out.

He was just correcting your incorrect statement, not bragging about it.

I was being hyperbolic.

I didn’t literally go through ever yearly Twitter financial statement.

The amount of net losses they have faced in 17 years renders those two years moot and then some.

It didn’t translate well over text. But carry on…

Accuracy is important. Twitter was never making huge profits, but it was a sustainable company.

Abso-fucking-lutely not…

These social media sites think people don’t want any excuse not to use them.

Just like newspapers charging a paywall to see an article— bitch there’s five other sites just like yours.

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Yeah. People groused about Xbox Live (online play on Xbox) costing monthly money. Next console generation Sony and Nintendo started charging too.

The platforms are nothing without the people and the content. Every dollar they make is off someone else's content. Trying to get people to cough up protection money is just peak corruption. Hopefully this is one of the things that does them in.

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anyone who would pay money to fb so that they can harvest all of your data for every penny that they can squeeze, is an idiot.

And it still is. They don't stop verifying...there are requirements and they still must verify you.

Meta doing something idiotic in response to another social network doing something idiotic is the pinnacle of hilarity.

I'll be deleting FB and Insta if this ends up happening, probably won't be the only one to.

I'm so glad I gave up Facebook years ago.

Free, and it always will be …

Once they see one company get away with it they all want in on it...

I don't know why people are pretending like online services offering a monthly paid premium option is some new crazy idea.

'cuz we got used to having our data mined and using these platforms "for free".

Am I wrong in thinking that the only value the tick ever had was that you couldn't pay for it?

I’m not sure what I’m missing here. How is he insane for doing it? Sure, less than 100k May be paying for it, so let’s say 80k, @ $11/month (iOS prices) that’s making them $880k a month just for people who want a blue check mark

$ 11.99 $ at month

Everyone who bought twitter blue: this is because of you demonstrating we are willing to pay for this nonsense lmao

The only problem I have with this is that you have to reverify just for changing a profile photo? I hope they aren’t assuming your profile photo is supposed to be some kind of personally identifiable photo because people and especially businesses often have them very stylized.

The price IMO should be nothing for people who actually have decent jobs or whatever… easily spend more on Starbucks each month.

It gives them a boost in the algorithm and more attention

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Any way to make a Zuck 😎

A quick little pump & dump before checking out?

It may be more like a way to keep shareholders from complaining that they're not trying to make a buck. If Meta didn't try to exploit this new revenue stream Musk revealed, there'd be questions.

Power users drive engagement and are the reason anyone comes to Twitter in the first place. He's trying to double dip.

My grandma will know it’s officially me.

Capitalism sucks.

“You know that service that we make tons of money on by just charging for ads? I bet people will pay for it anyway! Then we can make even MORE profit!”

As a social media manager this is going to utterly fuck my role.

No doubt I’ll have to start thinking of two tier content ideas. One for the ones who pay and expect more high production posts and then ideas for the normies.

Yeah but they might stop making money if people stop using it….

People are still using Facebook?

I feel like this should be on r/ABoringDystopia for some reason.

Sure, but you don’t charge the audience. It’s a voluntary fee that you only pay if you want a verified ID.

Laugh. Out. Loud.

What an insane guy, creating a new revenue stream that ONLY around 100,000 people are paying.

Such a stupid idea.

I was curious myself, but it doesn't look like he gave up. They're still putting money into it. But they're trying to pivot back to their core business.

It's a matter of time before this subscription model spreads like wildfire into everything. Think your Whatsapp is going to stay free? It'll start with a badge and verification for at $12/month, then guess what, it'll soon be a $2-5 a month for anyone to use the platform, possibly "less ad" version. And because the free version will be so unbearable and bloated, people will buy another subscription to their monthly bundle. Why? Because a couple bucks a month is less than a coffee! Right? Ironically this strategy will also mark the death of the subscription model. My guess is that groups of people will start their own little silo'd social media channels, a la Discord.

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It’s actually 37,000. If you think 37,000 people paying $8 is going to make a dent in that $44 billion dollar purchase I’m not sure what to say

It's about time, now everyone can get a blue tick. People are saying that they're shooting themselves on the foot but I really don't think that's the case. It's still going to be free to use and this is just a way or getting more money.

For those that want to become influencers and small businesses it's great news because they're taken seriously with a tick and people will take them way more seriously if they are paying for it. Not to mention that if getting the tick becomes an actual trend it'll get to a point where it'll be very ease to spot a spam/troll/bot account

It's times like this I am happy I never gave a shit about Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or whatever the hell else people use for socializing.

The only one I do use is reddit, and that's mostly to keep up with games, music, and movies, as well as the regular world news.

37000 in the first few weeks. That number will likely grow to at least double by June. And, it's a non trivial revenue stream.

It’s been two and a half months. And it actually went down. My guess is once people started getting that 2nd charge

That is standard behavior with any sort of subscription service.

Gonna be honest, if you're still around now and you don't run a business that needs to be publicly visible, I don't even know how you made it this far lmao

Or how to lose millions of users.

Wait I thought that the only way for it to be worth it was if you ARE notable, so you can protect your brand? Grandma doesn’t need the blue check but Volvo might

I’m hoping they do too. I only keep it as business, events etc are so entwined with fb it is limiting not to have it. If they start charging hopefully this will change though and I will dump it in a heartbeat.

If it helps limit bay shit crazy Americans fall in to echo chambers and not vote for Donald trump or republican types I’m all for it.

Lol. Would dump WhatsApp in a heartbeat too and go back to old fashioned phone. Only use it because it’s free. I don’t think it is worth any money per month.

That assumes the average Joe cares enough to continue to be engaged despite the cost. Many people don’t give a shit and only use it as it’s free. Hopefully the beginning of their demise. Honestly the world was better before social media shit. Hopefully we are heading back there. Or at least meta crash and burns.

Volvo most likely already several verified accounts. But some mid-size youtube/podcaster may not be notable enough to get one so they'll buy one.

Golly! I'm old enough to remember a time before any social media! And I was fine. It won't be a problem to go back to those days.

Well I should of fully deleted Facebook a while ago. No time like the present

It requires ID verification.

>the massive number of people

Massive is a stretch, they just got a lot of media coverage.

IMO…In my world… Things on social media ( I.e… Facebook/ Twitter / Instagram / Tic-Toc / etc…) are simply a distraction for when I have some downtime. I’ve lived over 50 years prior without it, I can certainly live the rest of my life without it. They go to charging… I’ll be gone with the wind lol

For as long as the service has been free to use, why not finally add something that brings in dollars besides ad revenue. What’s the problem here?

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Because they weren’t already an enormous profitable company? Now users can pay to have their data sold for them.

There's just so little money in this model, I guess it's mostly free to give people a little checkmark, but it won't solve the revenue drop they've had after so many companies are getting out of social media advertising.

Just for reference Q4 revenue was down 4% over last year and net income was down a whopping 55%. Shit's bad at mother meta.

https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/meta-reports-fourth-quarter-and-full-year-2022-results-301736645.html

At this point I assume it's gotta just be the Weird Aunts of the world.

They all know the game at this point. The first one to monetize something that shouldn't be monetized is ridiculed, and maybe delays rolling it out.

A handful of folks remember and point out how ridiculous it is when the second one does it. Then the third does it and we're used to getting screwed.

Luckily we're still on step one with car manufactures coopting the on-disc DLC model with BMW pay-walling heated seats.

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I laughed too hard at this.

so instead of just blocking bot accounts, which could be done easily and was a result of their inability to control account creation, they have decided to capitalize on the opportunity and charge people $12-$15 per month to verify their account profile so they won't get confused with a random bot... Not only do they already collect a ton of revenue from targeting ads for businesses to the users, they want to charge the users monthly subscription fees in addition.

Sounds like it's time for a new free social platform that isn't about charging subscription fees.

I think the reality is that only businesses, celebrities, and people who don't treat money as oxygen (like the rest of us do), will be the only people paying for this verified tick.

that requires too much work on their end. Why not just find a way to battle the bot system they helped create and promote by charging customers to pay to show others they are not a bot. They manufactured the problem they are capitalizing on now.

just you wait until Reddit has a subscription service set up to use. Or that certain forums will be subscription-based and only paid members can access them. I feel it's coming.

And then I will leave.

And I do not disagree that they will indeed try to do something to that effect.

Mostly 40+ year olds

Anyone who's short on cash makes them blue verification ticks LOL I gotta start charging people for this too :)

A user subscription to prevent them from allowing someone to impersonate the user.

You realize Reddit is social media..right?

So now they want you to pay them to steal your privacy, of course there are enough fools to comply.

Zucc isn't exactly the picture of smart decision-making. Look at how much money he's wasted on his metaverse .

He made billions and billions before that lol.

Okay, and?

I have a video I think you should watch.

he wouldn't be able to build billion dollar company if he doesn't have smart decision-making.