Facebook, founded by Mark Zuckerberg and his roommates, is one of the largest social media platforms. Initially launched as a networking site for college students, Facebook quickly expanded for literally everyone above 13 years of age having a valid email address.
As much as by 2012, Facebook had 1 billion active users, and by 2024, it still tops the list of most popular social media platforms with 3 billion active users globally.
The CEO of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, has led the development of key features of Facebook like News Feed, Like Button and, most recently, the efforts for accelerated development of metaverse. Facebook experience is getting refined every day with new features being introduced to enhance the social interactions.
In 2020, facebook launched a feature of “Vanish mode”, which erased messages after they were seen. This mode was turned on manually by swiping up in the chat box, and was turned off the same way – swiping up in the chat box. Once the message was viewed, it used to literally vanish, leaving no trace.
Facebook had introduced this mode by mentioning sometimes people want to say something spontaneously without being worried about the message sticking around. By automatically erasing messages, this mode served the purpose.
Facebook, however, has removed this feature from messenger and now introduced another feature of “Disappearing Messages”, which is a bit more flexible. It is a new feature being introduced currently, so it might not be available to everyone yet.
To whom it is available, you can turn this feature on by following three easy steps – clicking on the person’s name in chat box, scrolling down to privacy and support, and tapping on disappearing messages.
In contrast to previous vanish mode, this new feature gives liberty of setting messages to disappear after a specific period say an hour or a day. Best part is you can schedule this feature in advance and the messages will disappear after the set time period even if the messages aren’t read.
On fun side, in a Facebook post, Mark Zuckerberg has warned users not to take screenshots. It states: “New update for end-to-end encrypted Messenger chats so you get a notification if someone screenshots a disappearing message.”
He demonstrated this by posting a screenshot of chat between himself and his wife, Priscilla Chan, joking about supercomputers. In disappearing messages mode, Mark cracked a cheesy joke about supercomputers and his spouse took a screenshot, with him being notified about the taken screenshot.
So, now people can enjoy this amazing mode while staying cautious about taking a screenshot. This would ensure maximum privacy to Facebook users.
