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Facebook will add “unsend” feature after secretly deleting Zuckerberg’s messages

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Re: Facebook will add “unsend” feature after secretly deleting Zuckerberg’s messages

#41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would love to know the answer to this question.

Yeah so would I. Actually, I've often thought there should not be a restriction on the window during which you're allowed to delete a post on this site. I understand that there are reasons they might not want that such as to encourage civil interactions and so forth. But I still think there should be no restriction on it. There are things I've said in discussions I've had here that were not always well informed or mo…

On the other hand, it can be incredibly frustrating to be looking for a piece of information and find a nice thread about Just That Thing on reddit - only to find that all of the posts that actually contained useful information are [deleted] and there's nothing left except "I have this problem too!" and "Thanks" "Thanks" "That fixed it!" posts.

Re: Facebook will add “unsend” feature after secretly deleting Zuckerberg’s messages

#42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

When will he improve "Poke"? :)

Re: Facebook will add “unsend” feature after secretly deleting Zuckerberg’s messages

#43

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 t…

Does Zuck actually even use Facebook?

Re: Facebook will add “unsend” feature after secretly deleting Zuckerberg’s messages

#44
post #24

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.

Oh sweet summer child. Those messages aren't going to be deleted, they're just going to be hidden. They could be un-unsent as easily as they could be unsent. If you don't trust your friends not to blackmail you, you can't trust them not to just save every message themselves at the time you send it anyway. Even so, "unsending" messages is a meaningless gesture to security because you have no way to verify that anythin…

I doubt the worry was a friend attempting to blackmail.

Re: Facebook will add “unsend” feature after secretly deleting Zuckerberg’s messages

#45
post #15
post #12

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

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.

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...

Re: Facebook will add “unsend” feature after secretly deleting Zuckerberg’s messages

#46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would love to know the answer to this question.

Yeah so would I. Actually, I've often thought there should not be a restriction on the window during which you're allowed to delete a post on this site. I understand that there are reasons they might not want that such as to encourage civil interactions and so forth. But I still think there should be no restriction on it. There are things I've said in discussions I've had here that were not always well informed or mo…

I usually make throwaways for the same reason.

I think there is some merit to the idea of Right to be Forgotten[1] but at the same time, I feel like that would just help evil people hide their true nature. The other half of me wants to just have the NSA dump everything one day and let everyone know what everyone else has really been saying for the last 15 years. The first couple days would be tough for everyone to acclimate knowing who everyone really is. But in theory that is a net good. Deception is rarely for good.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_be_forgotten

Re: Facebook will add “unsend” feature after secretly deleting Zuckerberg’s messages

#48
post #45
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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...

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.

Re: Facebook will add “unsend” feature after secretly deleting Zuckerberg’s messages

#49
post #35

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

I thought this was a good question and went to try and find out. I grabbed the old source from https://ycombinator.com/arc/arc3.tar and started grepping around, but couldn't find any function to delete comments (only links, which do delete, but don't get purged from the cache it seems). I didn't set up Arc to try and run the thing though. If anyone has more knowledge, or understands the source better, or has newer co…

The old source is very different from what is running today.

Re: Facebook will add “unsend” feature after secretly deleting Zuckerberg’s messages

#50
post #43

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 t…

Does Zuck actually even use Facebook?

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 ...
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