Facebook's Unsend Feature Will Give You 10 Minutes To Delete a Message (theverge.com) 65
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.
My inbox is mine (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.
Re: (Score:2)
Congrats to Facebook on implementing something Gmail had 10 years ago.
Re: (Score:1)
Unsend all? (Score:1)
How good is this feature? Can you unsend everything you ever typed? Will the recipient forget reading them?
Re: Unsend all? (Score:1)
Prolly "deleted" but stores forener on a FB server somewhere
But go ahead and think it actually gets deleted
Re: Unsend all? (Score:1)
The EU will pass a law making it illegal for you to remember any messages which you read but are then "unsent."
New idea (Score:4, Funny)
Should help everyone.
Re: New idea (Score:1)
General solution: Future delivery (Score:2)
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
Re: (Score:3)
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.
Re: (Score:2)
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 wa
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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 ma
Re: (Score:2)
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 t
Funnily enough... (Score:1)
Re: (Score:3)
GMail has it. Within 10 or 30 seconds...
having your mistakes preserved eternally (Score:2)
Like the edit feature on Slashdot?
More and more "wrong messages" will be sent (Score:4, 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.
Re: (Score:3)
> Not *all*. Because windows allows focus stealing
In this case you carelessly chose the OS. :-P
Slashdot? We need unsend, unwrite and unread. (Score:2)
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!
Re: Slashdot? We need unsend, unwrite and unread. (Score:1)
We will all promise to forget the writing we didnt agree with :)
better? (Score:2)
"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).
ff (Score:2, Troll)
I'm gonna just call "Shenanigans" now... (Score:5, Insightful)
You can bet your ass they'll be preserved eternally, they may just not be *public*.
Re: (Score:2)
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.
People use Facebook? (Score:1)
(I'm perm-banned on two accounts.)
Re: (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.
1990 called (Score:2)
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 th
Re: (Score:2)
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
Troll heaven (Score:2)
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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
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Whitewash (Score:2)
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 gi
Know what's even better? (Score:1)
Deleting Facebook.
Sober Up Quick (Score:2)
Facebook? (Score:1)
so presumably (Score:3)
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
Still eternally preserved (Score:2)
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".