Facebook’s messaging platform, Messenger, has received a new ‘unsend’ feature, using which users may delete texts that have a typo in them or texts they have sent mistakenly. Similar to the ‘delete message for everyone’ feature on WhatsApp, this feature will allow users to remove their texts from Messenger within ten minutes of being sent. To do this, users will have to click on the text to be furnished with two options – ‘Remove for Everyone’ and ‘Remove for You.’ Clicking on ‘Remove for Everyone’ will delete the text and replace it with a notification that the text has been removed.
News of the development of this feature had appeared in previous leaks, and the inspiration fuelling the initiative was the reveal that Facebook’s CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, could delete his messages last April. Multiple sources reported the disappearance of text messages they had received from Zuckerberg, which were confirmed by Facebook to have the ability to disappear over time as a security measure following the Sony Pictures email hack of 2014.
This also brought to the fore that many executives, besides Zuckerberg, could avail of this feature, which provoked the average user to complain of preferential treatment on Facebook’s part. To appease his consumers, Zuckerberg promised to make the feature available for all users within a short period (nine months). Facebook also confirmed that they would limit Zuckerberg’s ability to avail the function before it became common for all.
The ‘unsend’ feature has been made available on the latest versions of Messenger on iOS and Android and follows Zuckerberg’s original feature with “some improvements to provide broader functionality to people using Messenger.”
