Facebook’s Planned ‘Unsend’ Messenger Feature Is Hypocritical And Could Increase Online Bullying

It seems everything that Facebook tries to do these days sparks another fire that it has to try and put out, and every time it does so, it creates another fire. In a recent case, it was reported that Facebook Founder Mark Zuckerberg had been deleting his messages in recipients’ inboxes. The social network has since announced that this ability would become available to everyone else, but not only is this being considered a breach of trust, it could lead to an increase in online harassment.

As TechCrunch recently noted about the development, being able to retract one’s messages after it was already sent was not something that users could do with Messenger. After Zuckerberg was caught doing it, however, suddenly the higher-ups at the social network have decided that it was time that everyone had the ability to take back what they wrote.

This so-called “unsend” feature will apparently be rolling out to users over the coming months. Until then, however, no more of the Facebook founder’s messages will be removed from the inboxes of users.

For the most part, it seems the social media giant is trying to play off the incident as something of a beta test. This would basically make Zuckerberg’s actions seem less of a breach of trust.

On that note, even if this was the case and Facebook was planning on giving everyone the ability to “unsend” messages all along, some are of the opinion that it’s just not a good idea. Speaking to Business Insider, messaging experts have expressed concerns about the potential increase in online harassment and bullying as a result of this rather convenient feature.

Having the ability to remove messages from someone else’ inbox basically gives users the green light to send whatever nasty things they want and just “unsend” it so that the victim has no proof of the incident. Taking a snapshot of the message is an option, but not if they aren’t able to act fast enough.