On Sunday, Meta announced that it would be launching a paid subscription service, which will cost $11.99 for the web or $14.99 for mobile. Now, critics have raised deep concerns about the way the social media giant has chosen to structure its new offering. Experts say that the new service will create a “digital caste system” of haves and have-nots. The paid service will make available to its subscribers a verification badge, extra protection against impersonation, direct access to customer support and added visibility. Users too have ridiculed the service, trolling Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg with trolls and memes.
“Safety and security features must NOT be up for sale,” says online safety expert Kavya Pearlman.
Watch | Meta introduces a monthly subscription model
AFP reports that Pearlman was unimpressed with the idea of paying for protection. She claims that it would create a “digital caste system” of haves and have-nots.
Taking to Twitter, she questioned why users who provide their data to the company and the “human who actually acts within T&S while on the platform” has to pay “and not the one who impersonates me or one who takes my data”.
A lobby group called the ‘Real Facebook Oversight Board’, which is highly critical of Meta, tweeted, “now Facebook wants you to fund the harmful model that fuels its whole business.”
Sinan Aral, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) who has conducted an analysis of the effects that account labelling has on online behaviours, says that subscription services like Twitter Blue or Meta Verified will create a divide between “in groups and out groups”.
The new Meta service will first be rolled out in Australia and New Zealand. While users trolled Zukerberg for copying Twitter CEO Elon Musk, Matt Navarra, a social media consultant suggests that the launch is a “bit unplanned and last minute.” Dan Ives of Wedbush Securities says the move is “risky” and that “there could be clear backlash from consumers that will never pay a dime for Facebook or Instagram and this move could push them out the door.”