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If you’ve ever accidentally sent something incredibly embarrassing on Facebook Messenger, with no chance of deleting it, you might be in luck. Facebook has announced it is rolling out an “unsend” button.
The rest of this article is behind a paywall. Please sign in or subscribe to access the full content.In an interview with TechCrunch, Facebook’s head of Messenger Stan Chudnovsky revealed that the company was currently rolling out the ability to delete messages up to 10 minutes after they’ve been sent. The Remove feature was released on Android and iOS in Bolivia, Colombia, Lithuania, and Poland yesterday.
“The pros are that users want to be in control… and if you make a mistake you can correct it,” Chudnovsky said. However, he noted the company would ensure the feature didn’t “open up any new avenues for bullying,” such as sending and then removing “bad messages”.
An unsend feature was first hinted at last month, when screencaps were leaked showing how it worked. In a more high-profile case earlier this year, Facebook said it had secretly deleted some old messages from its founder and CEO Mark Zuckerburg.
For us mere muggles, we already know a few features about how the unsend button will work. It will give you the option to delete a message for everyone in a group, or just for you, although you can’t delete a message someone else has sent. To delete a message, you’ll have to tap and hold it, and then press “remove”.
But don’t think you’re completely off the hook. A tombstone with a notification saying that you removed a message will be displayed to everyone in the group. So even if you’ve avoided the embarrassing message being seen in the first place, people might still have questions.
It’s unclear when the feature will be rolled out elsewhere yet, but if you’re in one of those aforementioned countries, you can start deleting messages right away. You lucky people, you.
