The days of sending drunk Facebook messages in the middle of the night are over as Facebook announced that it will allow all users the option to “unsend” their messages.
The news comes after the revelation the company’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg has already been deleting his private messages off the social network.
‘We have discussed this feature several times. And people using our secret message feature in the encrypted version of Messenger have the ability to set a timer — and have their messages automatically deleted,’ Facebook said in a statement to Business Insiders.
‘We will now be making a broader delete message feature available. This may take some time. And until this feature is ready, we will no longer be deleting any executives’ messages. We should have done this sooner — and we’re sorry that we did not.’
The revelation generated outrage accusing the company of setting one standard for its executives and another for everyone else, while others questioned whether Zuckerberg had something to hide.
The social media giant has apologised for not releasing this feature sooner and assured that it wouldn’t delete any messages sent by its executive employees until the Unsend feature is released for everyone.
Facebook said it deleted the messages for security reasons in the wake of the 2014 Sony hack.
“After Sony Pictures’ emails were hacked in 2014, we made a number of changes to protect our executives’ communications,” a representative told TechCrunch. “These included limiting the retention period for Mark’s messages in Messenger. We did so in full compliance with our legal obligations to preserve messages.”
Other Facebook-owned companies such as Instagram and WhatsApp have functions that mean users can delete messages.
