Facebook has finally added the ability for Messenger users to delete messages in a chat — something the social media giant had already selectively done for CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s old texts.
Last year, TechCrunch reported that some of Zuckerberg’s older Messenger texts had quietly vanished from the recipients’ inboxes. In a statement, Facebook cited the hack of Sony Pictures Entertainment in 2014 as a reason to “protect our executives’ communications,” which included “limiting the retention period for Mark’s messages in Messenger.” It’s not known what the contents of Zuckerberg’s deleted texts were.
Now, Facebook is making the ability to trash embarrassing or inappropriate Messenger texts available to all users worldwide, although you can only delete a message within 10 minutes of sending it. The feature is rolling out starting Tuesday (Feb. 5), the company announced. In April 2018, after the revelation of Zuckerberg’s deleted messages, Facebook claimed it planned to launch an “unsend” feature for Messenger in the “next several months.”
To use the feature, Facebook Messenger users tap on the message they want to remove and select the option to “Remove for Everyone.” The removed message will be replaced by text alerting everyone in the conversation the message was removed. Users will have up to 10 minutes to remove a message after it is sent.
If you want to remove a message just for yourself, you can still do that by selecting “Remove for You.” When you choose this option, the message will be removed for you, but not for anybody else in the Messenger chat.
