You can now unsend Facebook Messenger messages. Here’s how the new feature works

Feb 05, 2019

By Ari Rees

SALT LAKE CITY — Accidentally sent your mom a spicy Facebook message you meant for your significant other? You can now delete it within moments of sending it.

What happened: Facebook has just released a feature that will allow users to delete Facebook Messenger texts after they’ve already been sent, according to The Verge.

According to The Verge, if you tap a message you want to delete within 10 minutes of sending it, the screen will provide you with two options: “Remove for Everyone” and “Remove for You.”
Selecting “Remove for Everyone” will replace your message with text that you’ve removed your message.

How you can get it: Facebook told The Verge that the new feature will be available on the latest versions of Messenger for iOS and Android starting today.

Background: The feature comes about a year after controversy that Mark Zuckerberg and other Facebook executives had the ability to delete messages from the app while average users did not, as reported by TechCrunch.

In a statement released to TechCrunch last year, Facebook representatives said, “After Sony Pictures’ emails were hacked in 2014 we made a number of changes to protect our executives’ communications. 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.”
Still, many users wondered why Facebook execs had the exclusive ability to delete messages, prompting action on the company’s part.

Plans to create an “unsend” feature were announced by Facebook the same day of TechCrunch’s report on April 6 last year, according to The Verge.