Can You Delete a Fb Message Before Someone Reads It
Facebook secretly retracted letters sent past CEO Marking Zuckerberg, TechCrunch reported seven months ago. Now for the kickoff fourth dimension, Facebook Messenger users will get the power to unsend too and then they can remove their sent messages from the recipient's inbox. Letters can simply be unsent for the commencement 10 minutes later they're delivered so that you tin can right a mistake or remove something you lot accidentally pushed, just yous won't be able to edit ancient history. Formally known as "Remove for Everyone," the push likewise leaves a "tombstone" indicating a message was retracted. And to foreclose bullies from using the feature to cover their tracks, Facebook will retain unsent letters for a short catamenia of fourth dimension so if they're reported, it tin review them for policy violations.
The Remove feature rolls out in Poland, Bolivia, Republic of colombia and Republic of lithuania today on Messenger for iOS and Android. A Facebook spokesperson tells me the program is to scroll information technology out globally as soon as possible, though that may be influenced by the vacation App Store update cut-off. In the meantime, it'southward also working on more unsend features, potentially including the power to preemptively ready an expiration engagement for specific messages or entire threads.
"The pros are that users want to be in control . . . and if you lot make a mistake you can correct it. There are a lot of legitimate use cases out there that we wanted to enable," Facebook's head of Messenger Stan Chudnovsky tells me in an exclusive interview. But conversely, he says, "We need to make sure we don't open up any new venues for bullying. We demand to make sure people aren't sending you bad messages and then removing them because if you written report them and the letters aren't there we can't do anything."
Zuckerberg did it; presently you can, besides
Facebook first informed TechCrunch it would build an unsend feature back in April after I reported that six sources told me some of Marker Zuckerberg'due south Facebook messages had been silently removed from the inboxes of recipients, including non-employees with no tombstone left in their place. We saw that as a violation of user trust and an corruption of the company's ability, given the public had no way to unsend their own messages.
Facebook claimed this was to protect the privacy of its executives and the company's trade secrets, telling me that "After Sony Pictures' emails were hacked in 2022 we made a number of changes to protect our executives' communications. These included limiting the retention period for Marker's letters in Messenger." But it seems probable that Facebook likewise wanted to avoid another embarrassing situation like when Zuckerberg's sometime instant letters from 2004 leaked. One damning exchange saw Zuckerberg tell a friend "if yous ever demand info about anyone at harvard . . . just ask . . . i accept over 4000 emails, pictures, addresses, sns." "what!? how'd yous manage that one?" the friend replied. "People just submitted it . . i don't know why . . . they 'trust me' . . . dumb fucks" Zuckerberg replied.
The company told me information technology was actually already working on an Unsend push button for everyone, and wouldn't delete any more executives' messages until it launched. Chudnovsky tells me he felt similar "I wish nosotros launched this sooner" when the news bankrupt. But then 6 months went by without progress or annotate from Facebook before TechCrunch broke the news that tipster Jane Manchun Wong had spotted Facebook prototyping the Remove characteristic. And so a week agone, Facebook Messenger's App Shop release notes accidentally mentioned that a 10-minute Unsend button was coming soon.
So why the seven-calendar month await? Especially given Instagram already allows users to unsend messages no affair how old? "The reason why it took so long is because on the server side, it's actually much harder. All the messages are stored on the server, and that goes into the core transportation layer of our how our messaging system was congenital," Chudnovsky explains. "It was hard to practise given how we were architected, but we were e'er worried almost the integrity concerns information technology would open upward." Now the company is confident it's surmounted the engineering science claiming to ensure an Unsent message reliably disappears from the recipient.
"The question becomes 'who owns that message?' Before that message is delivered to your Messenger app, it belongs to me. Merely when it really arrives, it probably belongs to both of the states," Chudnovsky pontificates.
How Facebook Messenger'south "Remove for Everyone" button works
Facebook settled on the power to allow you lot remove any kind of bulletin — including text, group chats, photos, videos, links and more — within 10 minutes of sending. You can nonetheless delete whatever message on just your side of the conversation, simply only messages y'all sent can be removed from their recipients. You can't delete from someone else what they sent you lot, the feature's PR director Kat Chui tells me. And Facebook volition keep a private copy of the message for a brusque while afterward it's deleted to make sure it can review if it's reported for harassment.
To use the unsend characteristic, tap and concord on a bulletin yous sent, so select "Remove." You'll get options to "Remove for Everyone" which will retract the message, or "Remove for you," which replaces the old delete option and leaves the message in the recipient's inbox. You'll get a warning that explains "You'll permanently remove this bulletin for all conversation members. They can meet that y'all removed a message and still report it." If you confirm the removal, a line of text noting "you [or the sender's proper name] removed a message" (known as a tombstone) will appear in the thread where the message was. If you want to report a removed bulletin for abuse or some other issue, you'll tap the person's name, curl to "Something'south Incorrect" and select the proper category such as harassment or that they were pretending to exist someone else.
Why the ten-infinitesimal limit specifically? "We looked at how the existing delete functionality works. It turns out that when people are deleting messages because information technology'due south a mistake or they sent something they didn't want to send, it'south nether a minute. Nosotros decided to extend it to 10, but decided nosotros didn't demand to do more," Chudnovsky reveals.
He says he's non certain if Facebook's security squad will now resume removing executive messages. Nonetheless, he stresses that the Unsend button Facebook is launching "is definitely non the same feature" as what was used on Zuckerberg'south messages. If Facebook wanted to truly respect its users, it would at least insert the tombstone when it erases old messages from executives.
Messenger is as well building more unsend functionality. Taking a cue from encrypted messaging app Betoken'due south customizable per thread expiration appointment characteristic, Chudnovsky tells me "hypothetically, if I desire all the messages to be deleted after six months, they get purged. This is something that can exist set up on a per thread level," though Facebook is still tinkering with the details. Another option would be for Facebook to extend to all chats the per bulletin expiration engagement selection from its encrypted Hole-and-corner messages feature.
"It's 1 of those things that feels very simple on the surface. And it would exist very easy if the servers were congenital i way or another from the very beginning," Chudnovsky concludes. "Just it's one of those things philosophically and technologically that once y'all become to the calibration of ane.iii billion people using it, changing from one model to some other is mode more complicated." Hopefully in the future, Facebook won't give its executives extrajudicial ways to dispense communications… or at least not until it's sorted out the consequences of giving the public the aforementioned power.
Source: https://techcrunch.com/2018/11/14/how-facebook-messenger-remove-works/
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