“I am not a bot/intelligence services construct/foreign troll masquerading as an citizen etc.”. Is a pretty valuable service for the network.
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.
> “I am not a bot/intelligence services construct/foreign troll masquerading as an citizen etc.”. Is a pretty valuable service for the network.
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...
I have family members that have hundreds of people they've never met on their friends lists. Some of those personalities are obvious scammers/grifters etc. But aging people have diminished capacity for detecting that kind of stuff.
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.
Fair enough. Maybe that doctor’s account would benefit from paying for verification? He is a public figure of sorts. For accounts where most of its “friends” aren’t actually friends then some verification makes sense. I would guess that most accounts don’t fall into this category though.
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.