News

Facebook & Instagram Are Testing Twitter-Style Blue Checks

The $12 per month “Meta Verified” upgrade will give users a blue badge along with increased visibility, impersonation protection, priority support, and more.

Published

1 year ago

February 20, 2023

Nour Nasir

facebook and instagram are testing twitter-style blue checks

Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta is testing a paid verification service for Facebook and Instagram known as “Meta Verified“. The upgrade will cost $11.99 per month on the web and $14.99 on mobile, granting users a verified badge and other perks like increased visibility and prioritized customer support. The feature will first roll out to Australian and New Zealand residents this week and arrive in more countries “soon”.

To enjoy the benefits of Meta Verification, users must be at least 18 years of age, meet minimum activity requirements, and submit an official government ID matching the name and photo listed on Facebook and/or Instagram. Meta confirms that it won’t make changes to accounts that have been verified using the company’s previous system, including notability and authenticity.

Also Read: Hub71 To Invest $2 Billion In New Web3 Startup Ecosystem

As well as verification, users who subscribe to the service will unlock exclusive stickers for Stories and Reels and receive 100 free stars per month — the digital currency used to tip creators on Facebook. Meta cautions that businesses can’t apply for a Meta Verified badge just yet, and profile names, usernames, birthdays, and profile photos won’t be able to be altered without going through the verification process from scratch.

It’s hard to ignore the similarity between Meta’s new checkmark service and Twitter Blue, launched by Elon Musk recently. However, Meta seems to be taking account authenticity far more seriously, which hopefully won’t cause the deluge of fake verified accounts we saw on Twitter towards the end of 2022.

News

Binance Receives Virtual Assets License To Operate In Dubai

As its user base nears 200 million, CEO Richard Teng believes crypto adoption will soar over the next half of the decade.

Published

6 hours ago

April 19, 2024

Nour Nasir

binance receives virtual assets license to operate in dubai

Global crypto exchange Binance has been granted a full operational license in Dubai, in a move that’s expected to accelerate digital asset adoption and strengthen the UAE’s regulatory landscape.

The virtual asset service provider license (VASP) was granted by the Dubai Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority (VARA) and will allow Binance to extend its current range of services to retail investors, the company announced yesterday.

The move by Dubai authorities will be critical to Binance’s strategy of growing its user base globally. The crypto exchange expects to pass the 200 million user mark “quite shortly”, according to Richard Teng, the company’s CEO.

Once that milestone is achieved, Binance will have around twice as many users as rival platform Coinbase. Meanwhile, Crypto.com, another popular exchange with 80 million users, received a Dubai VASP license last week.

“We’re seeing much greater institutional adoption and institutional money coming into this space [along with] much greater regulatory clarity and a lot more jurisdictions approving [digital asset] products that bring in new investor classes,” Binance’s Richard Tang explained, adding: “As of now, we stand at about 5% crypto adoption globally, but that will become much faster moving forward”.

Also Read: Microsoft Invests $1.5 Billion In Abu Dhabi AI Tech Firm G42

Dubai and the UAE are extremely supportive of technologies like digital assets, and have already launched initiatives to boost adoption. The UAE has ambitious plans to become a world leader in the crypto economy of the future, with Dubai in particular being noteworthy for passing a new law to regulate virtual assets to support investors and exchanges.

“Global crypto regulation is currently showing diverging signs. Some developed countries have long suffered from crypto-related frauds and illegal exchanges. On the other hand, emerging nations like the UAE and Singapore have enacted crypto laws at faced pace,” said Vijay Valecha, chief investment officer of Dubai-based Century Financial.

As the UAE gears up to become one of the fastest-growing crypto capitals worldwide, investors and talent are flocking to places like Dubai. During 2023, the Emirates as a whole realized $204 million in capital gains from cryptocurrency investments, according to blockchain data analysts Chainalysis.