Featured Image Credit: Alamy
Topics: Technology, Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook
Claire Reid
Topics: Technology, Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook
If you’re the type of person who likes to screenshot your Messenger chats - then Mark Zuckerberg has a warning for you.
The Facebook founder and Meta CEO has announced that an update to Messenger will now notify users if someone screenshots one of their disappearing messages.
In a post on Facebook, he explained: “New update for end-to-end encrypted Messenger chats so you get a notification if someone screenshots a disappearing message.
“We’re also adding GIFs, stickers, and reactions to encrypted chats too.”
Zuckerberg showed how this will look by sharing a conversation between himself and his wife Pricilla Chan.
Vanish Mode was announced in November 2020, with the company revealing it would be hitting Messenger and Instagram in the US ‘soon’ before being rolled out to other countries at a later date.
It allows users to set a timer on how soon they want their message to disappear.
In a post from August last year, the company explained: “We’ve also updated the expiring message feature within our end-to-end encrypted chats.
“People don’t always want or need their messages to stick around and the timer controls let someone decide when their messages expire in the chat.
“We’ve updated this setting to provide more options for people in the chat to choose the amount of time before all new messages disappear, from as few as 5 seconds to as long as 24 hours.”
Rival messaging apps, including Snapchat, already allow users to set their messages to self-destruct after a few hours.
The update announcement shared by Zuckerberg has garnered mixed reviews from Facebook users, with one person writing: “I really needed this feature in 2009 when I used to drunk message!”
Another commented: “Thanks for the heads up, Mark! Thank you for not letting us make fools out of ourselves by taking screenshots.”
While someone else said: “Pls add this feature on WhatsApp we want to know if someone takes a screenshot of our conversations.”
However, not everyone was on board - one Messenger user asked: “What is the benefit of being notified after taking a screenshot?”
Another said: "Zuckerberg is now going to show when someone took a screenshot of a convo in messenger.... what a grass."
While others jokingly accused the app of becoming a ‘snitch’.