
Facebook will add “unsend” feature after secretly deleting Zuckerberg’s messages - uptown
https://www.theverge.com/2018/4/6/17206394/facebook-unsend-messages-feature-update-messenger-mark-zuckerberg
======
MBCook
A.K.A. Zuckerberg did something that was supposed to be impossible and to
explain how he did it they have now announced a new feature they just thought
up as cover.

~~~
jdtang13
It probably looks that way, but I don't think Facebook would just up and
announce a new feature to save some face. My guess is that they really were
going to make un-sending into a real public-facing feature, and they made a
premature announcement due to this Zuck unsending controversy.

~~~
MBCook
I don’t think it was developed for Zuck in the last few days.

I imagine it’s always been there but they never planned to turn it on for
normal users. Just a secret ability for some insiders.

Now that people know, it’s a “feature we’re developing” instead of an internal
tool/ability.

~~~
jdtang13
I'm not saying it was developed for Zuck in the last few days. Yeah, I think
it was definitely an internal tool or secret ability before. But one could
easily imagine that they really were going to roll it out to public users
sometime -- and now they're rolling it out earlier to save some face.

~~~
lovich
One could easily imagine that Zuckerberg had his users best interests at
heart.

However, none of his behavior so far has given us any reason to give him or
Facebook the benefit of the doubt

------
h4l0
This story feels like exaggerated due to weak link between Zuckerberg's
messages and the new feature.

They also add that Secret Chats in Messenger, Whatsapp and Instagram already
support removing an already sent message. Facebook decided to also offer this
feature for regular Messenger chats.

I guess any headline carrying Facebook, Zuckerberg and privacy concerns can
make it to top these days. Modern online journalism is a whole another
subject.

~~~
9935c101ab17a66
But.. wasn't this product announcement only made after journalists started
asking about the Zuckerberg messages? The original story WASN'T exaggerated,
facebook are just trying to play it down by making it sound like anyone can do
what zuck did.

~~~
tzakrajs
Zuck was just beta testing! He's hard at work testing new features for your
privacy!

~~~
dpflan
When will he improve "Poke"? :)

~~~
Razengan
POKE 53280, PEEK(53281)

------
andy_ppp
Does Hacker News really delete your comment if you delete it?

~~~
cblock811
I trust that they do, which is more than can be said for Facebook at this
point.

~~~
jstanley
I highly doubt that they do.

~~~
loceng
It's moot if there's anyone or service doing backups of HN, whether for
archiving purposes or other. I know Reddit has a few services doing that for
threads -- which recently lead to evidence on /r/legaladvice that can be used
against an employer as both the employer and employee posted separately, the
manager essentially stating that they wanted to fire the employee in
retaliation and for not participating (regardless of their cultural/religious
practices, and having been told so prior to continued violations).

Unfortunately we don't have government organizations that help with moderating
discussion (like a therapist would), such as a parent would help children
learn how to communicate with others in difficult situations, to deal with
emotions, etc; and if bad behaviour, giving someone time-out until they can
"play nice" again.

We have to of course make an environment good enough, rewarding enough to be
part of, that it's an incentive for everyone to want to play nice.

Perhaps we need to come up with a new system (separate from legal system, or
part of justice-education system) for dealing with situations that teach
compassion when compassion/understanding is missing, e.g. should bullying a
crime, or who should we leave that up to - is it even required to bring all
participants related to bullying together, parents of the perpetrator and the
victim, and create a healing circle to uncover the deeper underlying issues?

The whole point would be to rally support, so we can build stronger, deep
community - and society could, like with criminal law, have fines or other
limitations created if people decide to opt-out of this system.

We really need to become more comfortable with accountability, that our
actions have consequences - though we also must support a practice of
learning, mistakes happen during learning, etc; there's pretending to have
learned, and genuine change/evolution in a person's thinking and behaviour,
difficult to perhaps tell in some cases online.

------
varenc
Really confused about what this story is about since I have no problem
deleting years-old messages from Facebook messenger.

(Whether that really removes the bytes or flips a delete flag who can say)

Edit: as others have pointed out, this only deletes things locally for you
which makes this a pretty deceptive feature...
[https://m.facebook.com/help/messenger-
app/242107552657620](https://m.facebook.com/help/messenger-
app/242107552657620)

~~~
ladberg
If you delete those then the recipient can still see them (it just deletes
them for you). Zuckerberg's messages (and the new "unsend" feature) delete the
messages for everyone, which is different.

~~~
varenc
Wow thanks for clarifying. That is absolutely deceptive. The UI never mentions
that, but I found some support docs that do. I imagine the majority of people
deleting messages aren't aware of this...

~~~
jdtang13
I think it's a little funny but I wouldn't call it deceptive. If you delete
your local copy of a text message, that doesn't remove it from the other
person's phone. Same thing with messages on AIM and IRC. So un-sending seems
to be the far less obvious feature.

~~~
obmelvin
I'm not aware of a messaging service that lets you delete the recipients copy
of a message, so I'm fairly surprised about people's reaction to your
comments. Am I just not aware?

~~~
varenc
Slack/Facebook comments/posts are all things I use that let me delete
previously sent messages. This is possible because they control it all. (Of
course, I'm relying on the other users' clients coming online and respecting
the delete instructions)

and fair points about email... I had assumed this worked like other parts of
Facebook, which doesn't seem unreasonable given they control the whole stack.
(and they did shut down their old XMPP gateway awhile back)

------
propman
This is awesome! 17 year old me shit talking with friends shouldn't be used
against me if I were to obtain a position of power and be blackmailed by that.
Also, any message without context could be construed as sexist, racist,
privalidged, ablist or whatever.

Really positive development from this entire mess of a scandal.

~~~
tobtoh
Also means people can be harassed and the offender can delete the message
after they know the person has seen the message (via the read receipt).

~~~
codedokode
Deleting the message will look like admitting a thing done wrong.

------
master_ant
"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."

This says a lot about the current situation. What else don't we know?

------
pasbesoin
Ha, this just confirms what I thought to myself but decided not to comment on,
reading some other recent Facebook-disaster post here.

Mark has a different Facebook. I bet he doesn't see ads, unless he wants to.
And, come to think of it, when he or other blessed entities delete something,
it's really gone. Come to think of it, I wonder whether their data gets
scooped up by the various monitoring and collection tools that are doubtless
built in to the product and its administrative interface.

Are they really dogfooding their own product, at this point?

~~~
Zarath
Does Zuck actually even use Facebook?

~~~
loceng
If he does it could be why he seems so disconnected from reality? If the
algorithm puts positive news in front of him, and people regularly commenting
on everything in praise, with no real dissenting commentary, then ...

------
Medox
This was discussed and patented already in June 2016. Here is an article,
including a link to the patent: [http://techpp.com/2016/06/24/facebook-
messenger-unsend-messa...](http://techpp.com/2016/06/24/facebook-messenger-
unsend-message/) . Hardly something they have started to put together after
the scandal, but maybe the worst timing or idea to go back to now...

------
CryoLogic
Maybe Zuck can prevent some future scandals with this new feature.
Unfortunately we all know they aren't actually deleting the messages, just
hiding it. You can probably still buy the data.

{ message: `They "trust me", dumb fucks`, isDeleted: true }

In the UI: "Your message was successfully deleted!"

~~~
nafey
Does your message data actually get sold to third parties?

~~~
CryoLogic
There was a class action lawsuit in 2014 in regards to Facebook selling
private chat data. I am not sure what came of it.

But it wouldn't surprise me in the least.

------
nashashmi
Note: They arent talking about DELETING MESSAGES,

but UNSENDING messages.

Rant: FB is a data hog. But shares data with ad companies. To entice them into
advertising. Otherwise their ad platform sucks.

------
sAbakumoff
Questions I have: what's the number of Mark's messages that have been deleted
before upcoming Congressional hearings? Is it greater or less than those 33K
emails that Hillary Clinton has deleted after getting the subpoena? Does Mark
understand that after uncovering this story his career is most likely ruined
forever?

------
anigbrowl
Seeing as how people already record sketchy conversations by screenshotting
them this will only impress the naive.

Screenshots aren't absolutely perfect as evidence, but since error level
analysis can show up many kinds of graphic manipulation, they're pretty good
on a practical level.

~~~
matte_black
What’s naive is to even believe a screenshot. They can easily be faked. In
fact I think there’s entire apps just for this purpose. You would never know
the difference. You can also just straight up edit HTML and screenshot that.

Screenshots as evidence, how laughable.

~~~
abrahamepton
You completely missed the entire second half of the last sentence, which
refutes your point.

------
feelin_googley
What permission does the user give FB in terms of how FB can use the messages?

The message might "disappear" after a few seconds, but at that point FB may
have already extracted the information they want from it, information they
will use to further their business.

Assuming users want some sort of privacy, _from whom is it that they want
their messages to remain "private"_?

Will there ever be options in FB "privacy settings" such as:

[ ] Do not share with Facebook

[ ] Do not share with advertisers, political campaigns, etc.

Absurdity aside, the mere feasibilty of this is itself debatable.

 _Do users want their messages to remain private from companies like
Facebook?_

How about from FB's clients, e.g., advertisers, political campaigns,
hospitals, etc.?

How about from the rest of the general public?

We now know as confirmed by FB that this user data has been shared for years.
Perhaps FB can argue this was "informed consent".

However users can change their minds in light of more information. They should
be able to _revoke_ that consent going forward.

Will all that "leaked" user data FB has intentionally shared self-destruct
after some period of time? Unfortunately, no.

It seems to me that, in the main, the parties that have the _greatest
incentive_ to monitor users messaging are in fact _companies_ like FB and
their clients.

They have a financial incentive that is in the aggregate _far greater_ than
any individual (petty criminal, etc.). _Collecting user data_ has become their
business. "It is literally just what we do." Period.

Finally, thanks to the explosive growth of _single websites_ into vast
monopolies like Facebook that extend their reach into nearly every corner of
the internet, they, the companies behind these websites, _are in the best
position to do it_.

It should be self-evident but maybe needs to be restated: These companies
cannot protect the user from the company itself. The amount of _trust_
required of the user depending on these websites is simply mind-blowing (from
the perspective of someone who has lived in times when no such trust was
necessary).

Thats only an opinion. I respect any disagreement and welcome karma
subtraction as a means to express it.

~~~
matuszeg
Your statement on trust cannot be restated enough.

My additional concern is that, I do not use Facebook. I deleted my account
like 10 years. Yet they still retain data on me, not only without my consent.
They have the opposite of my consent. I explicitly told them to delete
everything they had on me and I am opting out of their service.

Yet articles like this pop up time and time again[1]. There is talks about
them scanning every picture on facebook for faces and building profiles of
everyone, including non-users.

How am I, a person who has no Facebook and does not want anything to do with
them supposed to stop them from monitoring and tracking me.

Imagine if in high school you found out some guy in your class was keeping
records of the structure of your face, or the websites you visit and you
confront them to stop and all they say is other students have allowed me to do
this so I keep everyone's records to make it easier for me to track the people
who gave me permission.

I assume everyone would not be comfortable with this, especially if they then
go to sell that data to the students running for class president so they can
manipulate your friends to harass you to vote for their candidate.

[1] [https://techcrunch.com/2018/02/19/facebooks-tracking-of-
non-...](https://techcrunch.com/2018/02/19/facebooks-tracking-of-non-users-
ruled-illegal-again/)

------
jakebasile
Please excuse some meta commentary here.

Is HN turning into an anti-Facebook echo chamber? I cannot believe the amount
of posts about Facebook, condemning Facebook, blaming Facebook, assuming the
worst motives of Facebook, and picking apart every word said by Facebook
executives. In every post's comments there are the same tired "you are the
product", "I deleted Facebook and if you don't you're an idiot", "dumb fucks
trust me" comments.

It's getting so that I don't even want to refresh here, since at any given
time a chunk of the headlines are taken up with the same old shit hating on
Facebook. I roll my eyes and move on usually, but it's getting to me to see a
forum I enjoy devolve into a negative hate train of spite.

I don't work for Facebook, they thought I wasn't smart enough to work there. I
have no financial interest in Facebook. I do use Facebook moderately often.
I'm mostly just tired of seeing the negativity and hate.

~~~
AlexandrB
I think Facebook is getting beat on because it's in the middle of a media
maelstrom and under a lot of scrutiny as a result. I also think it deserves
every bit of it and many of its social media peers do too (LinkedIn is
basically Facebook with even more "dark patterns").

Regarding some of the specific comments you're seeing repeated - yes "you are
the product" gets trotted out a lot - but it's basically correct, isn't it?
You haven't offered any counter-argument here. Pointing out that Facebook's
material incentives are _absolutely not_ aligned with those of their users is
always going to be relevant when discussing how Facebook handles user data.

Facebook _could_ minimize the data they gather instead of maximizing it, they
_could_ give users fine-grained control over what data "partners" get to
use/target, they _could_ make the defaults for many options private. There's
no incentive to do any of this though - so in many cases they do the opposite
[1].

[1] [http://mattmckeon.com/facebook-privacy/](http://mattmckeon.com/facebook-
privacy/)

~~~
dragonwriter
> I think Facebook is getting beat on because it's in the middle of a media
> maelstrom and under a lot of scrutiny as a result.

Facebook is getting beat on because the left and the privacy conscious are
concerned, for slightly different reasons, over the scope of the corporate
manipulation using personal data, and the Trumpist segment of the right wants
to keep attention on FB to deflect as much public attention as possible from
entities tied to Russia and/or the Trump campaign involved in the same
scandal.

That doesn't _quite_ give everyone a beef against Facebook, but it does mean
they are getting adverse attention from all sides.

