Back in April this year, some users on Facebook were annoyed after they discovered that some of the messages from Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg were deleted from their inboxes although I am confused how it would’ve actually occurred. But anyhow, users were annoyed and post that, Facebook came up with a beta feature that allowed users to ‘unsend’ a message which is something Facebook has never opted for in its decade-long existence.
Last month, we saw a working beta version of the ‘unsend’ messages feature thanks to few leaksters citing the fact that the feature isn’t available for anyone but few beta testers. But now, Facebook has started rolling out the unsend messages feature and Bolivia, Columbia, Poland, and Lithuania are the first countries to receive the feature on their Facebook Messenger app while the social media giant is working towards rolling the feature across the world or almost all the countries it operates which is almost every country on the face of the Earth.
Talking about the ‘unsend feature’, Facebook Messenger users will be able to unsend a message but within 10 minutes after sending it either deliberately and then realizing that it was childish or annoying or if it was by mistake but a 10-minute window is all you get to get rid of the sent message. When you send a message by mistake, simply long-press on the given message and a dialog box will appear prompting the user to either ‘Delete for You’ which is basically deleting a message from your inbox and not the recipients, or they can select ‘Delete for Everyone’ which basically un-sends the message right away.
Think this feature is familiar? Indeed it is familiar since WhatsApp which is owned by Facebook uses this particular feature although there are a different timeline and window that you can use this feature. Similarly, Instagram uses the same feature although there seems to be no window where the user can unsend a message. Anyhow, talking about Facebook, the feature works for 10 minutes post pressing the send button and works on text, photos, videos, group chats, etc which is kinda cool.
But why 10 minutes, you might ask? According to Stan Chudnovsky, the head of Facebook Messenger, when a user sends a message by mistake or the one he/she don’t want to send by a tap on the send button anyhow, almost a minute is enough to decide whether to pull the message back or not. With this reference in mind, a 10-minute window is more than exceptional.
Deleted messages will be replaced by tombstone messages i.e. “This message was deleted” thus leaving no traces of what the message actually contained. The users will be able to report a deleted message as well by tapping on the sender’s name >> Somethings Wrong >> Select proper category and bingo! Meanwhile, Facebook stats that it might keep the deleted messages for some time before gushing it out of the servers in case if they received any ‘reported’ requests that will have to be resolved.
