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Meta Verified, users can pay for an enviable blue check next to their name. But the feature also requires users to use their legal name as their profile display name without the ability to change it, raising concerns among sex workers, trans creators and other privacy advocates.
“For $15, it’s doxxing you,” said Pomma, a sex worker educator and adult content creator also known as Blair Bishop. “Obviously with the current politics in the country, with the war on porn and the war on trans people, this is just so unsafe.”
Meta verified, which one launched last month for all users in the US, including other benefits in addition to the verification badge. For $14.99 per month on mobile (or $11.99 on web for Facebook access only), subscribers get direct account support from Meta, proactive counterfeit protection, and exclusive stickers for Facebook and Instagram. To confirm their identity for verification, users must provide a selfie video and their government-issued photo ID.
But Meta Verified also requires subscribers’ display names to match the name on their ID, causing confusion among users. When requesting authentication, users are prompted to enter their first and last names as they appear on their ID. They also have the option of using middle names, initials and “common abbreviations” such as “Ben” instead of Benjamin, according to a Meta spokesperson. The application states that verified users can only change their name or profile picture if they cancel their subscription, make changes and resubscribe.
Users can view their verification request before submitting it, where they will be informed that any changes to their profile will be publicly visible. The page shows a preview of their Instagram handle, profile picture, and name, but it doesn’t explicitly state that the name the user provided will be their profile display name.
Meta says anyone who signs up for the premium service will get a response within 48 hours – using the middle name on my ID, I was verified in about 20 minutes.
Meta Verified requires subscribers to match their public display name with the name on their government-issued ID. Image Credits: meta
As Meta rolled out the new features, creators took to Twitter to warn each other about the legal name requirements.
OnlyFans creator Abigail Mac said she tried to apply for verification under her stage name but was denied. She then tried to request verification using only the initials of her legal name, but was again denied. She was immediately cleared for verification when she applied with her full legal name, but was unable to change her display name to her stage name once she was verified.
“By listing your name, fans can now go on the internet and search, ‘Where did this person grow up? Where do they live now?’ Can we look up house records?” Abigail Mac said. “And that’s how people find celebrities. A lot of things are public when it comes to buying a house with your real name.
In an email, a Meta Support representative told Abigail Mac that a user’s Instagram profile “must match the name on their government ID” to avoid impersonation.
The opposition to Meta Verified’s ID requirements mirrors that of the infamous Facebook real name policy, who implemented the platform in 2014. An individual user reported hundreds of accounts belonging to drag performers, trans users and others in the LGBTQ community as fake. To keep their account, flagged users had to verify that they were using their real name by submitting their ID — which didn’t necessarily reflect the name chosen by the user.
Facebook publicly apologized, and while it hasn’t lifted its real name policy, the company now allows flagged users to explain their situation before being suspended. Facebook eventually allowed flagged users whose names don’t match their government-issued IDs to use non-government documents such as library cards and diplomas to prove their identity.
Sex workers have wondered why Meta Verified’s identity verification options are so limited.
Abigail Mac’s Instagram account is already monetized through paid subscriptions and purchases from Instagram stores, and she regularly receives payouts from Meta. She said she already had to provide her government-issued photo ID and other tax documents to monetize her account, and wondered why her legal name had to be public to be verified. London River, another adult artist, called Meta’s display name requirement “ridiculous.”
“In other words, yes, you have to dox yourself to get verified,” London River said answer to a screenshot of the Meta Support email that Abigail Mac tweeted. “We all have enough documentation to link our real names to our artists’ names, business records, trademarks, test results, etc. But no. None of that matters.”
Verification is a “double-edged sword,” said Abigail Mac. While revealing her legal name is risky, verification has allowed her to delete impersonators and catfish accounts. Before being verified, Abigail Mac said she spent years trying to report copycat accounts and had talked to fans who had been scammed by accounts posing as her own.
Her engagement on Instagram has skyrocketed since she got verified — within a week of being verified, her account statement showed a 131% increase in accounts reached and an almost 60% increase in engagement. Before she was verified, her Instagram life was said to average around 100 viewers. Her most recent Instagram Live had 600, and within 10 minutes she made $11 “just sitting and talking.”
The Meta Verified subscription in New Zealand and Australia includes increased account visibility and reach, but that feature has not yet rolled out in the US. The Meta spokesperson said Abigail Mac’s spike in engagement isn’t necessarily a direct correlation to her Meta Verified subscription.
For now, Abigail Mac plans to keep her Meta Verified subscription, even if she puts herself in danger by revealing her legal name. She said she’s been “doxxed before” and wants to see if money can be made from her increased involvement.
“My account is growing, and it’s just a crazy little number,” Abigail Mac said. “But does that actually translate to subscribers? So I’ll probably know that in a month to three months I’ll really know if it makes a difference.
But for others, like Pomma, the internet is already unsafe.
“For us, for trans people, for sex workers, this just creates such a hostile environment for the most marginalized who are just trying to exist online,” they said. “You get instant chat support with a real person, it is easier to delete catfish accounts. So I’m just wondering how this will be used against people who don’t verify or can’t verify.
The concerns about Meta’s verification requirements dovetail with a wider debate in sex work circles about age verification requirements for adult sites. This year Louisiana, Mississippi, Virginia and Utah passed laws requiring users to submit government-issued ID to view porn sites. Eleven other states have proposed similar laws.
Ashley, a fellow sex worker organizer who deals with tech platform issues, pointed out that Meta’s verification requirements should raise red flags for all users, not just adult content creators.
“If you still want to give people the opportunity to prove it with identification, it must be done very safely. Ideally, the data is not stored anywhere. If you’re identified in a bar or at a sex party, they don’t store that data along with the biometric facial scan,” she said. “It’s not surveillance.”
Sex workers have been lead the charge against online censorship and mass surveillance since SESTA/FOSTA was signed into law, which drastically censored online sex work in an effort to stop sex trafficking. Many, like Pomma, are wary of online identity checks in the wake of increasingly hostile legislation further criminalizing sex work.
“Forcing people to submit IDs online, with the way our legislators and our environments are now, seems like a bit of a slippery slope to me,” said Pomma.
A spokesperson for Meta said the company is launching with a high security standard. The company could eventually relax the requirements, the spokesperson said, and could work on a “secure solution” for identity verification that would not require users to match their profile name with their government ID. Meta did not specify a timeline for easing ID requirements and did not guarantee that Meta Verified subscribers would be allowed to change their screen names.
While some creators feel that Meta Verified isn’t for them, the spokesperson said the company “continues to invest” in its creator community through both its free and paid tools.
At the very least, Meta could allow verified users to keep their official names private, Ashley said.
“The verification process should not affect the display name,” she continued. “It’s a very simple change that would make it safer for everyone, not just sex workers and transgender people, because many people use a pseudonym online to create a separation between their public and private lives.”
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