Facebook to introduce unsend option for private messages

Facebook will introduce an unsend feature for its Messenger chats after it became known that private messages from CEO Mark Zuckerberg had been removed from recipients’ inboxes. At the moment, that is only possible for Facebook leaders, as it turned out on Friday.

On Friday, TechCrunch released the news, based on three of its own sources, that Zuckerberg and other company leaders had deleted their messages from other people’s inboxes. This came to light because TechCrunch was still able to find old messages from Zuckerberg via email notifications, but they were nowhere to be found in Messenger.

The removal is said to have been done to protect the communications of leaders, something the company is said to have started after the Sony Pictures hack in 2014. To date, however, Facebook has never publicly announced that it is doing so. But less than half a day after the TechCrunch piece was published, Facebook announced that this option would not be limited to Facebook staff themselves.

For ordinary users, it is only possible to delete messages, sent and received, on their end. The other person in the conversation on their end can keep the messages as long as they want. The unsend option should be available to users within a few months. Facebook says it has been working on it behind the scenes for some time, but also apologizes that the feature has been delayed.

The feature is separate from the secret conversation option provided by the Messenger mobile app. In this, messages on both sides can be deleted based on a timer. It is not yet clear how Facebook’s new delete function will work. It is also not yet known whether this will work for messages sent before the function sees the light of day.