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Instagram May Be Tinkering With Paid Verification

A new rumor suggests Instagram might get its own paid blue badge.

David Lumb Mobile Reporter
David Lumb is a mobile reporter covering how on-the-go gadgets like phones, tablets and smartwatches change our lives. Over the last decade, he's reviewed phones for TechRadar as well as covered tech, gaming, and culture for Engadget, Popular Mechanics, NBC Asian America, Increment, Fast Company and others. As a true Californian, he lives for coffee, beaches and burritos.
Expertise smartphones, smartwatches, tablets, telecom industry, mobile semiconductors, mobile gaming
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Instagram, the video and photo sharing service owned by Facebook parent company Meta, could be the next social media platform that tries out paid verification, according to a new rumor.

Code snippets suggest Instagram is working on a subscription plan that includes a blue badge, tweeted app developer and tech leaker Alessandro Paluzzi. He noted that there are only a few references to paid verification in the code. Aside from the color, we don't know what a paid verification badge would look like.

Paluzzi shared screenshots with TechCrunch of the specific code lines he'd found that read "IG_NME_PAID_BLUE_BADGE_IDV" and "FB_NME_PAID_BLUE_BADGE_IDV" suggesting paid verification. IDV, he noted, could mean identity verification. There were other code references to a new type of subscription product that were also in the latest builds of the Facebook app, he told TechCrunch. 

Paluzzi has previously unearthed other potential features hidden in Instagram's code, like testing songs auto-playing on your profile (a la MySpace) and copying BeReal's daily candid photo prompts. 

Meta didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.