Facebook will soon implement a new feature that will allow users to unsend messages sent to others on its Messenger service.
Earlier this year, Facebook came under fire when it was discovered that the company let a ton of user information fall into the hands of marketing companies. That fire later grew when the company continued issuing new responses that were weaker than the last. It’s hard to say how this incident will affect Facebook in the long-run, but what we do know is that it’s already led to the creation of a new feature.
Around the time the Facebook security debacle went down earlier this year, users who were sent messages by company founder Mark Zuckerberg were discovering that those messages were suddenly gone. As it happens, someone in charge decided to unsend those messages, which is a clear misuse of power, especially as users themselves don’t have access to such functionality.
After that episode, Facebook promised that all users would end up getting an unsend feature at some point in the future — and apparently, that future is close. The social networking giant revealed to TechCrunch last week that the feature was still being worked on, and now, Twitter user Jane Manchun Wong has managed to test the feature with a prototype build.
There are many unknowns right now, but that’s probably fine since Facebook is likely to iterate on the design implementation before a big-scale rollout. One of the biggest questions surrounding this is sure to revolve around the amount of time users will have before being able to retract a message, and currently, that seems to be a complete unknown. It might be fair to let the timer be activated as long as the message hasn’t been read.
Regardless of the minor details, an unsend feature is likely to be welcomed by most Messenger users. Many of us have sent messages to the wrong person, or maybe even a message we quickly came to regret. How many arguments do you think would have been prevented if this feature was implemented years ago? For many, it can’t get here quick enough to prevent future embarrassments.
