Have you ever sent a message on Facebook and you quickly regretted it or have you ever experienced embarrassment for typing mistake? Finally for the first time, users will be able to unsend a Facebook message so they can remove their sent messages from the receiver’s inbox. Unsending a Facebook message is available in Poland, Bolivia, Colombia and Lithuania today on Messenger for iOS and Android and soon it would be available for all users around the world.
There are some limitations such as user’s sent messages can only be deleted before ten minutes after delivering. This would provide the possibility of correcting accidental mistakes. Editing or removing Facebook messages will not be possible for older messages. This feature allows you to remove any kind of message including text, photos, videos, links etc.
Is it safe?
Some people concerns that allowing users to unsend a Facebook message could have been risky, since such a feature would allow some kinds of crime evidence to be erased. But similar features already exist on variety of apps, for example WhatsApp users were able to delete WhatsApp messages for up to an hour after they are sent and also Instagram has unsend messages ability for direct messaging since it was introduced.You can delete a sent message in Telegram messenger too.
Although in order to consider this concern, people will be able to see that you removed a message and they still can report inappropriate content. A text containing the sender’s name removed a message will appear in the place where the message was before unsending.
How to report a removed Facebook message?
If you want to report a removed message for any kinds of issues, you should use the following steps:
- Tap the person’s name.
- scroll to “Something is Wrong” and choose the proper category as the reason of reporting.such as harassment or that they were pretending to be someone else.
- Facebook retain unsent messages for a short period of time so if the messages are reported, it can be reviewed for policy violations and preventing track covers.
Why the 10-minute limit specifically?
Stan Chudnovsky, Vice-President of Messenger, explained:
“We looked at how the existing delete functionality works. It turns out that when people are deleting messages because it’s a mistake or they sent something they didn’t want to send, it’s under a minute. We decided to extend it to 10, but decided we didn’t need to do more,”
How to unsend a Facebook message?
how to unsend a Facebook message
To use the unsend feature do the following steps:
- Tap and hold a long press on a message you sent within 10 minutes after delivering.
- At the bottom of screen select “Remove”.
- You will now face two options “Remove for Everyone” which will unsend the message, or “Remove for you,” which is the old delete option and leaves the message in the receiver’s inbox.
- You’ll get a warning that mentions“You’ll permanently remove this message for all chat members” If you confirm it, your message would be remove for all recipients but you would still leave placeholder message.
What are other ways to make sure a Facebook sent message won’t exist anymore?
You can use Facebook’s secret conversations. These allow you to create an end-to-end encrypted chat with your Facebook friends. First of all it is completely private and second considering our purposes, you can use the “timed messages” feature which destruct your messages after specific set time.
How to use Facebook secret conversations?
- open a new chat in Facebook messenger
- Tap the lock in the top corner of the screen( “Secret” on iOS).
- Search and tap a name on your friends list to start a new conversation.
- By the stopwatch icon in the message bar you can select how long you would like the message to exist for before it deletes itself from both devices.choose from a range of 5 seconds to 24 hours.
- You will see a timer next to your message, counting down how long it takes before destructing.
