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Facebook comes up with a new feature that users have been asking for for some time. It is now possible to delete messages sent within Facebook Messenger. In the past this was already possible, but only for your own inbox. However, now it is also possible to delete messages for everyone.

The new feature was announced yesterday by Facebook and is available for iOS and Android. But there’s a small if on the whole. Users only have ten minutes to decide what to do with their message. After that, the message just stays there and can no longer be deleted.

Delete message

Deleting a message from Facebook Messenger is very easy. Simply press a message and you’ll see the option to delete a message for everyone. It also remains possible to delete a message for yourself only, although you may wonder how useful that feature is.

This new policy is the result of a remarkable development of last year. Then TechCrunch announced on the basis of a conversation with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg that Zuckerberg had given himself extra power on the platform as a manager. It was also possible for him to delete messages. By that time, there had already been several reports from people who said that their chat conversations with Zuckerberg suddenly looked different.

Unequal policy

Facebook later acknowledged that Zuckerberg could indeed delete messages. Managers had been given the opportunity to remove their messages afterwards for safety reasons. However, the company had never publicly announced this, nor had it informed the recipients of the deleted messages.

This choice did not go down very well with users, who felt that they should also have a sun function. Facebook then came up with the promise that it would also develop something similar for users. And: until then, Mark Zuckerberg was no longer allowed to delete messages. Ten months after that, the function is finally there.

If someone deletes a message, it’s lost for everyone. However, a message will remain on Facebook’s servers for some time, in case it is a message that violates the rules.

This news article was automatically translated from Dutch to give Techzine.eu a head start. All news articles after September 1, 2019 are written in native English and NOT translated. All our background stories are written in native English as well. For more information read our launch article.