Ever wonder why you don’t get a lot of spam in your Facebook inbox? It’s because the site quietly routs messages from people you aren’t friends with into a separate folder, cryptically labeled “Other.” That works really well when it comes to sparing you from unwanted mail. And it’s obviously important to Facebook, which crushed MySpace partly because the latter was strewn with spam. But as Elizabeth Weingarten explained in Slate in 2011, Facebook's filter sometimes works a little too well, shielding you from messages you would have actually really liked to see.

Now the social network is testing a new way to solve that problem: letting strangers pay a fee to send a message directly to your inbox. On Thursday, Mashable noticed an amusing example of the scheme in action. If you’re in the test group and you try to message Mark Zuckerberg, the site will offer you the chance to send your missive straight to his inbox—for a cool $100 (see screenshot above). A Facebook spokesperson explained today that the company is “testing some extreme price points to see what works to filter spam.” Messages to the inboxes of less-notable personages, meanwhile, will start at $1.