Battered by media reports that it “secretly” deleted CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s posts from his recipients’ inboxes, Facebook is now planning to make its “Unsend” feature available to its over two billion users in coming months.
According to a report in technology website Tech Crunch on Saturday, unless the “Unsend” feature is released for everyone, Facebook will not unsend or retract any more of Zuckerberg’s messages.
“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,” a Facebook spokesperson was quoted as saying in the report.
“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 spokesperson added.
According to an earlier Tech Crunch report on Friday, “Three sources confirm that old Facebook messages they received from Zuckerberg have disappeared from their Facebook inboxes, while their own replies to him conspicuously remain.”
“Facebook never publicly disclosed the removal of messages from users’ inboxes, nor privately informed the recipients,” the report added.