 Today, I want to talk to you about this new update with Meta and Instagram where they're actually going to charge you to become verified. The blue badge, they're going to start giving anybody this blue badge. Evidently, they're going to verify who you are with a government ID and stuff of that nature. It does in all the different articles I've read about it. They do say blue badge, but I'm wondering about that. I'm wondering if it might be a different color just to kind of keep separately who is actually a celebrity versus people that aren't celebrities. Because the way that the verification works now is that it's very, very hard to get. I got verified on Twitter and Instagram years ago and Facebook, and it was not easy whatsoever. I had to get all kinds of press, all kinds of articles written, and I applied for verification several times and did not get it. So it was a very, very strenuous, tough process to get the type of press that you need to actually get verified. And now they're just going to open up the floodgates and allow anyone, basically, to get verified. Let's see here. Let's see here. Is it up? It's up. OK, so this is from Mark Zuckerberg. This is his meta channel. I'm actually part of his meta channel. And so I saw this post as it happened, but he says here, good morning, new product announcement this week. We're starting a rollout of MetaVerified, a subscription service that lets you verify your account with a government ID, get a blue badge, get extra impersonation protection against your, against accounts claiming to be you. I want to talk about that in just a second and get direct access to customer support. This new feature is about increasing authenticity and security across our services. MetaVerified starts at $11.99 a month on web or $14.99 a month on iOS. We'll be rolling out in Australia and New Zealand this week and more countries soon. So, I mean, OK, so let me just kind of give some commentary here. For one, I'm wondering if people that are already verified are now going to have to pay for the verification. And I'm also wondering what the impersonation, let's see what he said here, what the word was exactly, extra impersonation protection against accounts claiming to be you. So to me, I'm wondering about that because as you guys know, if you're following me on Instagram, you've probably gotten a DM from someone and the account is from Nigeria. I've looked up all the accounts that claim to be me, but you know, it'll be one letter off. It'll be like two eyes and Ricky, or it'll be two eyes. And they even, they even did a fake zero diamond account, but there are Ricky Crews counts on Facebook. There's actually Ricky Crews counts on YouTube that comment under my videos trying to get people to communicate with them on WhatsApp and other platforms to scam them out of money to ask them to invest in crypto or companies, or I don't know what all they try to get people to invest in, but it's not me, guys. It's someone else impersonating me to try to scam my followers out of money. And Instagram has done nothing about those accounts that are impersonating me up to this point. So it makes me wonder what's going to be different now. They can't even, you know, and we've reported this account, you know, all of my followers that reach out, they say, we're reporting it. I've reported these accounts several times and nothing happened. So my question is what's going to be different? Are they going to, you know, and now that they're going to, you know, have people pay for this service, of course, they're going to have way more people verified. And it seems like the people that are verified now is going to be a very small group compared to the amount of people that will become verified. And they couldn't even keep up with it with a small group. So it really kind of makes me wonder, like, are they opening up a new division that's going to actually start taking care of this? Or, you know, I'm just, I would love to know what that means because I have been a victim of that specifically and continue to be a victim of that specifically right now. As we speak, they're doing it right this second. And I want it to stop. I mean, I even had agents reach out to me and say, hey, I almost gave money to this person. And there may have been people who actually did give money to some of these fake accounts. Google is the same thing. I report the account on Google. Nothing happens. The person's still allowed, is allowed to be there. And if, you know, if I, you know, block them or something, here they come again. They just create a new account. Something has to be done with that specifically. But that's a whole nother conversation outside of what we're talking about with. Meta now going to move towards a subscription model for verification. Now Twitter did this and evidently Twitter did quite well on this or Meta would not be doing this so soon. I mean, this is really quick after Twitter has come out with this. You know, Meta like jumped right on the bandwagon. And it kind of makes me wonder if this, if they're doing this to make more money because they are going to make a lot of money off of this service. The amount of people that want to be verified or, you know, you know, will pay for this service is going to be enormous. So this is going to be revenue, massive revenue, in my opinion, to Meta, which we'll see what we'll see what that does to the stock price. But yeah, I'm wondering what you guys think on what this is going to do to the platforms. It's going to water down the, you know, the authenticity of Instagram. And when I, you know, scroll through and I see a verified account, it stands out to me. It stands out to me and, you know, it makes me, you know, look at the DM, you know, it makes me look at the comments a little more. When I see a verified account, it's going to water that down. And when I see verified accounts, you know, I think I'm going to be able to notice, okay, they paid for that account or, or, or what. But again, I'm wondering if it's going to be a different color. If the badge is going to be blue, it says blue in the comment there. But I'm wondering if the, you know, people that are truly verified because of press will be treated differently than people who are paying. For this subscription to, to become verified. So it'll be interesting to see how all this plays out. Like he said there in the, in the message, they're not bringing this out in the US yet. It's going to be in, I think he said Australia, New Zealand, they'll roll it out there first and see, I guess, test it out in those different markets and see where it goes. But I'm very interested on the impersonation, you know, what their, what their plan is there and how they're going to rectify that. Or if anything is going to change, or if people from Nigeria are going to be able to continue to use my name to go out there and try to scam people. That's not right. And these platforms should not allow this. So again, I'd love to hear your thoughts and I'll see you guys on the next video.