Facebook Messenger App now lets you delete sent messages from recipient's inbox

Have you ever been in a scenario where you wished you could delete the message you just sent? Well, Facebook CEO and creator Mark Zuckerberg found himself in that very scenario, so what did he do?

According to an investigative report, Zuckerberg removed sent Facebook messages from the inbox of the people the messages were sent too. At the time, Zuckerberg and co simply cried “corporate security”, sweeping the matter under the rug. Whether it’s guilt-ridden consciences or the fear of being hypocritical, one thing’s for sure, Facebook learnt from their mistakes, and the social media giant is releasing an update that lets all users delete sent messages within ten minutes of sending them.

The new tool can help retract messages sent to the wrong person, typos and other errors within the given time frame that is. The unsend feature will only allow you to delete the sent message; it won’t prevent the person on the other end of the conversation from seeing the message. Just take a page from the Flash’s book and act fast.

No; this feature didn’t really exist before. The previous feature allowed you to delete a sent message so you wouldn’t see it in your inbox, but the recipient would still be able to see the message. The current feature gives you the option to “remove for everyone” or “remove for you”.

The new feature on Facebook Messenger works by tapping and holding the message in question; after which you’ll see an emoji response window on top and options to copy, forward or remove the message at the bottom. The “delete for everyone” option only works on messages sent up to 10 minutes ago. You cannot go back in time and delete any message you want.

This almost perfect feature does have one major drawback as other users in the conversation will receive a text alert when a comment or message has been removed. A placeholder noting that the message was removed will allow other participants in the conversation to report messages after they’ve been removed, to presumably prevent abusing the new feature.