Data privacy for rich people: what the latest Meta changes mean for users

In the early days of social networks we learned the old adage that if a product is free, then the real product is you.

When, on the other hand, we move towards a paid business model, legitimate in a market that continues to have very little audience but a great deal of social media, it means that the dynamics are changing.

Yesterday  Meta has decided to offer a monthly subscription of about twelve dollars to those users (at the moment individuals, not yet business) to have a series of advantages, also in terms of visibility, level of customer service support, within the Facebook and Instagram platforms. For now they will start a test in Australia and New Zealand but a global expansion is expected soon.

What is being explained, at least for now, is that all the issues relating to the identification and maintenance of the data of those who will pay for the service will be treated with a high level of service, while it will not happen for the others.

It seems that this does not interfere with those who had already received the blue badge before this decision, but it is not clear what advantages those who had already had the blue badge  will be able to access without paying since it will become a subscription system.

In addition to the change of business model, there are two fundamental issues to be analyzed from the point of view of data security and the type of personal data requested.

First of all, to have the verification it will be necessary to send and keep active specific documentation containing the personal data and the identification photo of the applicant. This corresponds to the often debated issue of people's digital identity and that is the total impossibility of anonymity even for those who, for example, used to appear only with  a pseudonym on social networks, even if widely used.

If my name is Banksy and I don't want to give my name to the platform either (because I am scared of a potential  data leak, and  a data leak would cause much greater damage than not having a blue badge to me ) for obvious reasons of maintaining privacy, I will have a lane special for which I will not have to send specific identification documentation? Or perhaps it is the right time that we will discover the identity of all the anonymous artists to whom we did not have access before?Can we pay for exceptions to the rule, and remain famous and blue badged?

The advantages of the blue badge were above all related to a fact of reputation towards others: if it has a badge it is the original, if it has it it means that it has an important job, it works.

By paying for it, this added value could actually be eliminated, unless, as with any loyalty or subscription program, there is the idea of ​​making the badge  a sort of progressive club with various types based on the price paid (silver, gold, executive?). 

The most worrying thing from the point of view of privacy and the use of user data remains the dual track  in terms of treatment: identity theft could be treated differently if committed to the detriment of a non-payer than to a payer, while both parties have equal rights to their own self-determination, name, and  even content and intellectual property. In fact, it will be interesting to check the developments of Meta's privacy policy, to understand if there will be themes dedicated to basic users and different levels of risk management and prevention for those who are ready to pay.

This two-speed world also raises fears that an opt-out system is set up for non-payers compared to the more protected blue badge.

Basically the risk for non paying  members  is to be the object of specific advertising target, analysis and indiscriminate data collection to repay the usage of a social network that increasingly reminds us that it is not a public service offered by a government or regulated entity, but a public company that for reasons unknown to us (but certainly linked to the survival of the  business) can, apparently with good reason, decide to change the rules, in front of which, as for any monopolist, it is practically impossible to escape.

Even when the risk is about our security and identity .