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Facebook's Unsend Feature Will Give You 10 Minutes To Delete a Message (theverge.com)

Earlier this year, Mark Zuckerberg came under fire after he and other executives removed their Facebook messages from several recipients' inboxes. The move led many to question whether the company would give other users the option to unsend messages. According to Twitter user @MattNavarra, the answer is yes. The feature has been listed as "coming soon" in the release notes for version 191.0 of Messenger's iOS client. The Verge reports: Facebook Messenger will soon allow you to delete sent messages up to 10 minutes after you've originally sent them. Compared to the hour Facebook gives you to delete an erroneous WhatsApp message, 10 minutes doesn't give you too much time to correct yourself. But it's a lot better than having your mistakes preserved eternally.

65 comments

  1. My inbox is mine by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    *This* is one of the reasons they'll pry "classical" mail from my dead, cold hands.

    All those idiots pushing Discourse and whatnot. My inbox is mine, and whenever anything enters it, *I* fucking decide about its fate. No shit.

    1. Re:My inbox is mine by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You can always have your own messenger client software, that simply doesn't honor the "unsend" request. Failing that, do a screendump whenever someone make an ass of themselves. Preserved for eternity, even if they "unsend".

    2. Re:My inbox is mine by tripleevenfall · · Score: 1

      Congrats to Facebook on implementing something Gmail had 10 years ago.

    3. Re:My inbox is mine by erizon · · Score: 1

      That's something different - Gmail just pretends it has been sent it for 30s to allow you to "unsend", the feature in Whatsapp/FB is a protocol that informs clients to remove already received message.

  2. Unsend all? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    How good is this feature? Can you unsend everything you ever typed? Will the recipient forget reading them?

    1. Re: Unsend all? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      What part of "10 minutes" did you not get?

    2. Re: Unsend all? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      What kind of minutes are these?

    3. Re:Unsend all? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If you typed all of them in the last 10 minutes, maybe :)

    4. Re: Unsend all? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Prolly "deleted" but stores forener on a FB server somewhere

      But go ahead and think it actually gets deleted

    5. Re: Unsend all? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Insert âoethings left unsaidâ joke here

    6. Re: Unsend all? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      The EU will pass a law making it illegal for you to remember any messages which you read but are then "unsent."

    7. Re: Unsend all? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Adjust the computer's clock to before Facebook was even created, problem solved

    8. Re: Unsend all? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Insert "mangled unicode because I don't know how to turn off 'smart punctuation' and slashdot won't fix it" joke here.

  3. Stupid users by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    You're just not giving people enough credit ... for being retarded.
    Take the intelligence you assign to the less intelligent dog breeds, then divide that by 1000.
    That's your facebook/discord user.

    1. Re:Stupid users by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I think that's too easy.

      People are lazy, and are easily nudged into sticking to their "entry level" tools instead of (slowly) gaining proficiency. This is an anti-pattern which the silos, desperately dependent on growing "user numbers", exploit to the tune of their best behaviour scientists.

      As to Discourse et al -- they're free software, but (a) made by nerds, who earnt their chops at the silos (and use the silo's frameworks, they're free software or open source or something, anyway) and have no critical appreciation of the (ugh!) social problems surrounding their little, cute block worlds, and (b) made for lots of users out there conditioned by those very silos. A 2.0 of the pattern we already know where each successful GUI has to be (like) Windows.

      Good intentions but bad consequences.

      [1] Facebook paid 16 billions for Whatsapp: go fucking monetize that! If Zucki has cold sweats at night, it's those stakeholders wanting some ROI, not the parliaments inviting him to have some "stern talk", I guess.

    2. Re:Stupid users by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yes you're right. They're still stupid, but they're not responsible for the minefield ... full of bear traps, that's been carefully setup around them.
      They never stood a chance really.

    3. Re:Stupid users by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Thanks for that analogy. While somewhat gloomy, it made my day :-)

    4. Re: Stupid users by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I bet you wish you could unsend your comment.

      But you can't.

    5. Re: Stupid users by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Why would I want to unsend it you bitch?

  4. How come by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    They don't let you unsent everything you've ever typed?

    Why only 10 minutes?

  5. New idea by bmimatt · · Score: 3, Funny

    How about we give FB 4 minutes to stop and think about itself?
    Should help everyone.

    1. Re: New idea by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Facebook never understood the chat feature

    2. Re:New idea by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I believe FB has a team of people employed to think about itself. Unfortunately they think about how to expand and market their collection instead of what is ethical.

    3. Re: New idea by Zero__Kelvin · · Score: 0

      That's probably because it isn't a chat feature. It's a *Messaging* feature. Yes, you can chat in real-time, but the recipient doesn't have to be logged in to receive the message. It's not hard to understand, but it is especially ironic that you don't understand it and claim it is Facebook that doesn't understand. Actually it isn't ironic now that I think of it. I have come to expect this kind of stupidity on Slashdot.

      --
      Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
  6. Removed from user's inbox does not mean it's not e by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Facebook (and most big tech) actually never remove any bit of information. So while the "removed" message will not be visible in the inbox I'm sure it and it's metadata (including if and when it was removed) are preserved by facebook and attached to your profile, which itself is still up for grabs to whoever is interested and wiling to pay for it (obviously aggregated with the ones of a few other millions people)

  7. General solution: Future delivery by shanen · · Score: 1

    Still can't tell why no one implements a proper email system with an understanding of time. In such a system, this feature would be easily implemented with a default actual delivery time of 10 minutes after the Send button, but until the actual delivery you could cancel the send. If 10 minutes isn't right for you, then you could set it for any other time you want.

    In my own case, I would probably prefer an hour for non-urgent email. Too many times that I've had second thoughts. Plus, I think it's actually a benefit to send less email to people. If there's an urgent email option, then the send would both mark the subject with an urgent flag and send it immediately even if my default delay was longer.

    The same approach to email could apply to scheduling email that doesn't need to go out for several days. I could compose an immediate reply, and schedule it for future delivery. I would probably want a reminder a day before the actual delivery just in case I had additional thoughts. Again, that is something that often happens.

    By the way, I was actually joking when I said I can't tell why. I think the why is that very few people think in terms of time over money. Everything looks different after you understand how important time is relative to everything else. And that's enough time for this topic for now, but I bid you ADSAuPR, atAJG.

    --
    Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
    1. Re:General solution: Future delivery by butzwonker · · Score: 2

      How about waiting an hour instead of sending it immediately? You're an adult, aren't you?

      Your feature reminds me of that startup company that wants to monetize a single function they deliver, that your mail is only checked and forwarded to you three times a day.

    2. Re:General solution: Future delivery by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Outlook has deferred sending features.
        (It's crap in other ways, current having to use OWA because Outlook proper insists on prompting for and rejecting my password for no good reason, I've waded through enough web pages on how to fix this issue, tried every suggestion, and noted that there are loads of people out there who have *never* managed to get this fixed...)

    3. Re:General solution: Future delivery by DarkOx · · Score: 1

      There is exactly no reason though to do that at the messaging layer. (well there is one reason and I'll get to that) If you want that behavior the place to implement it is the client. After all if you want to 'rethink and recall' a message the best value there is for it to have never left your control. You most likely don't just not want the recipient seeing it but ideally you don't want anyone seeing it. After all if it goes to some server somewhere it could be the subject of discovery etc. Example maybe you write that poison pen letter to a colleague and decide that perhaps it was a little over the top and might be considered harassment. You cancel the message. if its sitting on the server somewhere and you do something else in the future; I can't see why it might not show up in discovery. In which case it could be used against you. No its better for you if that message stays on your equipment until its transmitted or destroyed.

      So why do it server side? - Only legitimate reason I can think of is because everything has to be a s***y web application today, where the client state gets mostly blown away unless you keep the browser open. Yes there is HTML5 storage but literally nothing uses it.

      --
      Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
    4. Re:General solution: Future delivery by shanen · · Score: 1

      It's really rather difficult to interpret your questions and comments in any constructive way. Therefore I will only respond in a fuzzy general way.

      Different people like to work in different ways. Therefore I think it is better to give them general tools that are (1) easy to use and (2) that allow them to work the way they prefer.

      From the attitude of your question and your handle, you might be a fan of Google Plus or have some other involvement with it. I think the failure of that fundamentally good idea was largely due to violations of those two principles for good tool design. The google has become too fond of monolithic one-right-way thinking. (I would go even farther and say that's part of the growing evil that the google has become.)

      So what is wrong with allowing people to do things their own way?

      The answer from the perspective of such corporate cancers as Facebook and the google is that it is wrong because it fails to maximize profits to the highest degree possible. Whatever way is the most profitable is the only way that should be supported and investing in any other ways only increase the costs and reduce the profits. (Yes, that is actually a rather gross simplification, but I've already invested much more time than your nonconstructive response deserves.)

      --
      Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
    5. Re:General solution: Future delivery by shanen · · Score: 1

      There are a couple of good ideas in your email, but mostly a bunch of negative attitude, confusion, and conflation of the actual issues at hand. Or maybe you just prefer quibbling over low-level details or can't generalize to a higher level? Whatever. In conjunction with your sig, I conclude that constructive conversation is too unlikely. Therefore my response is:

      Ask again later. And more politely.

      Perhaps we can have a polite discussion of the sort that is so rare on today's Slashdot However I'm inclined to doubt it.

      --
      Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
  8. Unsend a fart... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Imagine that!

  9. Racebook RIP 2018 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    It's over for you facebook.

  10. Funnily enough... by wiretrip · · Score: 1

    I was just thinking the other day that this feature should be part of the SMTP standard, or at least most email clients!

    1. Re:Funnily enough... by aglider · · Score: 2

      GMail has it. Within 10 or 30 seconds...

      --
      Sent as ripples into the electromagnetic field. No single photon has been harmed in the process.
  11. having your mistakes preserved eternally by ChoGGi · · Score: 1

    Like the edit feature on Slashdot?

  12. More and more "wrong messages" will be sent by aglider · · Score: 3, Interesting

    People is already sending messages without reading and thinking.
    This "feature" will give users a false perception and they will rely on it to be more and more careless.
    There's no message sent by error. They are all sent by carelessness.

    --
    Sent as ripples into the electromagnetic field. No single photon has been harmed in the process.
    1. Re:More and more "wrong messages" will be sent by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      There's no message sent by error. They are all sent by carelessness.

      Wrong. Not *all*. Because windows allows focus stealing, you can be clicking on a button in one application and have another application pop up at that exact instant and 'steal' the click. This happens frequently in Windows but most of the time it's harmless since the 'stolen' click doesn't hit a button or the button it hits is fairly harmless. But on several occasions I've had very annoying errors due to this. I suupose you could say that you could prevent this by never having any overlapping windows, but that does make windows entirely unfit for purpose.

    2. Re:More and more "wrong messages" will be sent by aglider · · Score: 2

      > Not *all*. Because windows allows focus stealing

      In this case you carelessly chose the OS. :-P

      --
      Sent as ripples into the electromagnetic field. No single photon has been harmed in the process.
    3. Re:More and more "wrong messages" will be sent by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      > Wrong. Not *all*. Because windows

      Well there's your problem. Windows? Ahahahaha. Yep, don't use that.

  13. Slashdot? We need unsend, unwrite and unread. by aglider · · Score: 1

    Why hasn't slashdot the ability to unsend or unwrite my own post?
    I also need to add "unread", so I can forse users to forget what they already read.
    I need those now!

    --
    Sent as ripples into the electromagnetic field. No single photon has been harmed in the process.
    1. Re: Slashdot? We need unsend, unwrite and unread. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      We will all promise to forget the writing we didnt agree with :)

  14. better? by sad_ · · Score: 1

    "But it's a lot better than having your mistakes preserved eternally."

    you mean it's not being displayed, because it will be preserved on facebook servers eternally. just like all the facebook sttaus updates you make, but then cancel, are also stored in your profile (but not displayed).

    --
    On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.
  15. ff by AndyKron · · Score: 1, Troll

    Fuck Facebook and whatever it does.

  16. I'm gonna just call "Shenanigans" now... by Timothy2.0 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "10 minutes doesn't give you too much time to correct yourself. But it's a lot better than having your mistakes preserved eternally."

    You can bet your ass they'll be preserved eternally, they may just not be *public*.

    1. Re:I'm gonna just call "Shenanigans" now... by Zocalo · · Score: 1

      You can bet your ass they'll be preserved eternally, they may just not be *public*.

      I'd actually say that "may" was the operative word here. Sure, *you* might have 10 minutes to retract a message, but that also means a 10 minute window of opportunity for someone to take a screencap for posterity, repost it, tell HR to put your temination notice in the post, etc. If you've got a high-profile with a lot of followers and especially foes that's going to be more than long enough.

      --
      UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
  17. People use Facebook? by aliquis · · Score: 1

    (I'm perm-banned on two accounts.)

    1. Re:People use Facebook? by bn-7bc · · Score: 1

      How did you manage that? I'm somtimes a bit quick on the post button but have not been banned by fb yet.

    2. Re:People use Facebook? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      1. Post porn. Everybody wants it, but apparently not on fb.
      2. Discuss terrorism, from the terrorist's viewpoint.

  18. 1990 called by bill_mcgonigle · · Score: 1

    The old MSMail had this on NT server. You could unsend an unread message, but not if it was read. Seemed to work fine.

    This needs a centralized sever to work well but that's what FB has.

    It's harder with federation like SMTP. I seem to recall Usenet had a cancel-message format. Like return-receipt, doing this on SMTP would be up to the client to honor, but that would have been better than all the "ignore my last message, this one is corrected" messages all the time. Heck, there must be a dusty RFC on this.

    --
    My God, it's Full of Source!
    OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
    1. Re: 1990 called by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Facebook has a problem. They think because they have billions of users they have to make changes that will be sort of useful for everyone, satisfying no one. They should really think about the user first, and then the solution

    2. Re:1990 called by El+Cubano · · Score: 1

      The old MSMail had this on NT server. You could unsend an unread message, but not if it was read. Seemed to work fine.

      Long ago I was advised that my email tone was typically...abrasive, let's say. Over the years as I have made an effort to work better with people, I have observed two fundamental rules that I think "simulate" the feature you describe:

      1. As my hand hovers, ready to hit the "send" button, I stop myself and re-read the entire message start to finish, slowly.

      2. If I am mad, upset, etc. I either delete the message or move it to drafts and return to it later (making sure to repeat the process starting with rule 1). If I am level-headed and the message has no errors (errors include things that will hurt someone's feelings unnecessarily, inflammatory words, etc.), and I am comfortable pressing send at that moment, then I press send.

      I actually even apply that strategy here on Slashdot. I write more comments than what my comment history shows. Many times, I will write a scathing reply to someone here on Slashdot, just to get it out of my system, then close the tab without actually posting the message. Of course, sometimes I still can't help but post something that I know will be inflammatory; but that's why we all come to Slashdot. Right?

      Writing messages that you never send is therapeutic without spreading negativity. It lets you get the emotions out of your system. For me it works well enough that sometimes I write one message saying exactly what I think with no regard for the impact of my words, instead focusing on getting my feelings out. Then when I delete it and start over I am much more moderate in what I write.

      Everybody should try it.

      I used to pride in speaking my mind without any output filter. I have grown up and realized that is not always the best or most productive approach.

  19. Troll heaven by clawsoon · · Score: 1

    Sounds like a good tool for trolls. Send harassing message; delete; repeat. I'm waiting for the story where someone sends 10,378 messages to their ex over the course of a day, deleting them all, forgetting that there's such a thing as screenshots.

    1. Re:Troll heaven by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Not only screenshots: Facebook's servers will preserve the messages.

    2. Re:Troll heaven by DarkOx · · Score: 1

      My guess would be that it work like marking an FB post private does. You can do it; but it will still display to somoene they have already displayed it to

      --
      Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
    3. Re:Troll heaven by clawsoon · · Score: 1

      You mean I was wrong? Dammit... delete comment! Delete comment!

    4. Re:Troll heaven by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yup - and faked screen shots, you can't prove you didn't delete without some massive trial.

      Good times!

      Don't use facebook.

  20. Re:Zuckerberg's nothing but a JEW scumbag by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    TLDR & fuck off to gab.

  21. Whitewash by sacrilicious · · Score: 1

    Zuckerberg came under fire after he and other executives removed their Facebook messages from several recipients' inboxes. The move led many to question whether the company would give other users the option to unsend messages.

    Framing this as user envy (of the ability to delete messages) is a red herring. Zuck deleting messages was wrong because it's a coverup. Even if every user had had the ability to delete messages, executive communications should be held to a higher standard; in the world of governance, silent unannounced redactions are for weasles and crooks.

    10 minutes doesn't give you too much time to correct yourself. But it's a lot better than having your mistakes preserved eternally.

    Bad phrasing. Your mistakes are still preserved eternally, just after a 10 minute delay. This mea culpa from Facebook is a weak token gesture, which still doesn't give users the same powers the execs exercised, while attempting to make people think that the original execs act is now whitewashed.

    --
    - First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then ???, then profit.
  22. Know what's even better? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Deleting Facebook.

  23. Sober Up Quick by Only+Time+Will+Tell · · Score: 1

    So you have 10 minutes to sober up and realize that late night message to your ex was a mistake!

  24. Facebook? by BringsApples · · Score: 0

    ...people still use that?

    --
    Politics; n. : A religion whereby man is god.
  25. so presumably by rossdee · · Score: 2

    then the message won't reach the recipient for 10 minutes at least.

    or have they actually invented a time maxhine

    cue Cher: If I could turn back time

  26. Still eternally preserved by Nethemas+the+Great · · Score: 1

    But it's a lot better than having your mistakes preserved eternally.

    Unless it's in the TOS, you should have no expectation whatsoever that your "deleted" messages are NOT preserved eternally. Don't kid yourself. Facebook keeps everything, Facebook sells everything. They long ago redefined the word "delete" to mean "do not show to end-user".

    --
    Two of my imaginary friends reproduced once ... with negative results.