UPDATE: Meta says that this is not an active Meta Verified benefit, and is not currently in testing.

After testing it out over the last year, Instagram will now enable all Meta Verified subscribers to restrict their DM requests to other verified users only, adding another perk for paying users.

As you can see in this screenshot, shared by app researcher Radu Oncescu, verified IG profiles now have the option to restrict their message requests to verified users only.

Verified users on IG are either notable accounts, as identified by Instagram’s team, or paying users who’ve signed up to Meta’s Verified program, so conceptually, this setting would enable you to filter out more junk requests, and ensure that only serious queries are coming in via your DMs.

Well, “serious” in terms of high profile accounts and whomever can afford to pay for verification, and there’s not really anything to scammers and scammers from also paying for Meta Verified and reaching your inbox either way. But maybe, if you’ve had enough of bot profiles adding you to random chats, or badly worded marriage proposals in your inbox, it could be appealing.

Really, it comes down to how many DMs you get, and how much time you have to sort through them. If you’re not getting many requests anyway, it’s probably not worth much to filter it, but that value obviously increases relative to personal utility.

I suspect, then, that this will only really be valuable to a small subset of IG users. But if that’s you, then congratulations, you likely have, or will soon have this update.

Interestingly, it also replicates a feature that Elon Musk and Co. added for X Premium subscribers last year, which enables paying users to restrict DMs to other paying members only.

The difference on X is that it also removed verification from all non-paying accounts, meaning that the only DMs you get are from people who’ve also chosen to pay, but then it recently reactivated X premium for free for accounts with over 2,500 verified followers as well.

So, in effect, it’s actually pretty similar. Whether that’s a real value add, however, remains questionable at this stage.

But it is another example of Meta copying Elon, at least by some stretch, which will please Elon’s many dedicated fans at least.

So there’s also that.