Facebook Messenger becomes the latest messaging app to give you the chance to delete embarrassing text. The feature will be available on the Facebook app soon, giving users a 10 minute window to erase a message from their chat history and from the recipient’s inbox.
Facebook published some release notes on the App store where they explained their “unsend” feature and discussed other tweaks that they’ve also added to the app.
Remove a message from a chat thread after it’s been sent. If you accidentally send the wrong photo, incorrect information or message the wrong thread, you can easily correct it by removing the message within ten minutes of sending it.”
Despite the fact that you now have the ability to delete a message, the new feature doesn’t guarantee that your message won’t be read, it only guarantees that it’ll disappear if you choose to unsend it within your 10 minute window.
Other messaging apps like WhatsApp and Gmail have similar message deleting features, with WhatsApp giving users up to one hour to delete their messages. Still, there are some drawbacks. WhatsApp can’t completely erase a message, it simply deletes the text while notifying the recipient that a message was deleted. Gmail works differently, holding your email in a queue for a short period of time and guaranteeing that no one will receive your email should you choose to erase it.
In any case, it’s always great to have ways of scrubbing things off the internet, even if the features are still a little clunky. We still don’t have a perfect way of preventing dumb text messages, but we’re getting there.
