After WhatsApp, Facebook to add ‘unsend’ messages feature

Just like WhatsApp, social media site Facebook too is now rolling out a feature that will let the users unsend and retract messages.

The company revealed this after it came to everyone's notice that Facebook has secretly been retracting old messages CEO Mark Zuckerberg sent via Messenger while the replies remained. The social media site confirmed that it is has been doing so for a while and is going to introduce an ‘unsend’ feature through which the users will be able to retract messages.

Tech Crunch reported that this ‘unsend’ feature will let users take back the messages and will be released to all Messenger users in the next couple of months. However, no further details were provided regarding the functioning of the feature.

Six lawsuits filed against Facebook after data breach scandal

“We have discussed this feature several times. We will now be making a broader delete message feature available. This may take some time. And until this feature is ready, we will no longer be deleting any executives’ messages. We should have done this sooner — and we’re sorry that we did not,” a Facebook spokesperson told The Verge.

The news about the feature came in just hours after reports showed that messages from Zuckerberg were deleted from the users’ inboxes. The company’s terms of service does not mention policies regarding deleting messages that do not violate community standards and due to this, the disappearance of the messages is being considered as a violation of trust, especially at this moment where Facebook is already under investigations regarding Cambridge Analytica.

Moreover, the ‘unsend’ feature was already present in WhatsApp that allows users to delete a message within a specified period of time, leaving a notification of ‘This message was deleted’.