Facebook's new $12 fee is straight out of Don Corleone's playbook – The Washington Post

Mark Zuckerberg’s latest announcement gives me Don Corleone vibes.He’s got an offer you can’t refuse: Pay up, or good luck ever getting your Facebook and Instagram accounts back from hackers.Meta, the parent company of Facebook, confused a lot of people last weekend when it said it will begin selling $12-a-month subscriptions starting in Australia and New Zealand, and eventually the United States. No, it is not going to charge everyone for using its social networks.Instead, Meta is testing a paid account “verification” service. That will come with a blue check mark after they’ve checked your ID and something desperately needed by everyone on Facebook: access to real-human customer service to deal with rampant account lockouts and hacker takeovers. They see your vulnerability as a business opportunity.Zuckerberg isn’t alone in putting your security up for sale. In an even-more-egregious money grab, Elon Musk’s Twitter recently said it will start charging for a basic security feature that used to be free. Going forward, Twitter says that two-factor text-message authentication will only be available to people who subscribe to its $8 Blue service. (Everyone who doesn’t pay either gets less security or needs to change their settings ASAP — read here for instructions.)While
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