Facebook is also set to allow users to delete messages sent to their contacts.
In the release notes for the latest version of Messenger for iOS, the feature is already mentioned explicitly, with a launch expected ‘soon’ and details on how it works, allowing messages to be deleted up to 10 minutes after they were originally sent.
As is the case with other apps of this kind, this applies even when the contact has already viewed the message, but details of how it works are still scarce.
On WhatsApp, for example, deleted messages do indeed disappear, but the speech bubble remains, indicating that there was text there which was deleted by the sender.
The idea is that the same approach will be applied to Messenger.
At present, the feature for deleting messages in the app only works for the user themselves; it has no effect on the messages received by others.
On the other hand, the idea of extending this option and allowing users to reverse their decision has been under consideration since April, when Facebook itself admitted that its founder and CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, and other key executives at the company had the feature enabled on their profiles.
The feature then became available to some users in October. Questions remain, however, as to exactly why it is taking the company so long to roll out a feature that is already present in virtually all messaging apps on the market.
The short time limits are also striking, given that on WhatsApp – which is also owned by Facebook – the maximum time is one hour.
Be that as it may, users can breathe a little easier knowing that they will soon have a second chance – however brief – to reconsider what they have said to their contacts.
Although it has only appeared in the iOS version’s release notes, the plan is for this new feature to be rolled out to the Android operating system and desktop versions of Messenger as well.