Mark Zuckerberg of Meta was inspired by Elon Musk's recent Twitter shenanigans to require people and organisations to pay a monthly subscription fee in order to get a verified blue checkmark on their Facebook and Instagram pages.

Every subscriber, according to Zuckerberg, would have direct access to customer service (which honestly is unnecessary as this is pretty much given and needed to serve every customer).

Not only that, but he also added that in order to receive your verified blue tick, all you would need to do is verify your account using a government ID, in our case our Identification Cards (IC), and with all these verifications, users would eventually gain additional impersonation protection against imposter accounts.

The feature, he explained, aims to improve security and authenticity across all of their services.

On the web, Meta Verified costs US$11.99 (about RM53.12) per month, while on iOS, it costs US$14.99 (roughly RM66.41) per month.

The Meta Verified service will launch in Australia this week, according to The Verge, with a monthly subscription costing AUD 19.99 (about RM60.87) for the web and AUD 24.99 (around RM76.09) for mobile.

In contrast, it will cost NZD 29.99 (about RM82.79) per month in New Zealand for mobile and NZD 23.99 (approximately RM66.22) per month for the web.

Apart from having the verified badge to indicate that an account is legitimate, Mark Zuckerberg emphasised that customer service is an important aspect of the Meta Verified subscription value.

After an account is verified, they can more easily identify and delete any impostor accounts since they will know which account belongs to the "real you."

Australia and New Zealand currently offer the subscription Facebook and Instagram verification service, and additional countries will soon follow.