What if Instagram was working on a paid certification?

Paid certification on Instagram and Facebook coming soon? Will the Meta be interested in the Twitter model?

Instagram may consider offering paid certification to its users. At least, this is what follows from a few lines of code discovered by Alessandro Paluzzi, an expert in this kind of investigation. The developer shared screenshots of the application code with TechCrunch, showing the strings “IG_NME_PAID_BLUE_BADGE_IDV”and “FB_NME_PAID_BLUE_BADGE_IDV”.

Paid certification on Instagram and Facebook coming soon?

These texts explicitly mention the “paid blue badge”, most likely in reference to the blue checkmarks that certified users have on the platform. FB and IG refer to Facebook and Instagram, which may indicate that Meta is considering paying user certifications on these two platforms. IDV, as TechCrunch points out, is a popular acronym for “identity verification.”Alessandro Paluzzi has discovered many features that have not yet been rolled out in the past, including a BeReal-like feature and an Instagram post scheduler.

Will the Meta be interested in the Twitter model?

In addition, the developer also discovered code related to the new subscription type, but no one knows if this is directly related to paid certification or not. As you probably know, Twitter Blue is a subscription service that costs $8 or $11 a month and gives users access to that platform certification checkbox as well as some experimental features. Offering a paid certification was one of Elon Musk’s first moves when he became head of Twitter, and it clearly made Blue more attractive to customers. However, its launch was rather disastrous, the company then did not take any security measures to ensure that no one could impersonate anyone or any organization.

If Meta is indeed developing a paid certification, it must find a way not to repeat Twitter’s mistake. Especially since Instagram users are most likely in a rush to certify their account when we know how hard it is to have a blue badge on the app at the moment. There is even an Instagram certification black market where people sometimes shell out tens of thousands of dollars to get a blue tick next to their username. TechCrunch clarifies that Meta didn’t want to comment on Alessandro Paluzzi’s discovery, so it’s hard to know if the giant is actually working on such a feature. To be continued!