Hours after Zuck deletion scandal, Facebook announces new unsend feature

Enlarge / Mark Zuckerberg in 2017. (credit: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

Hours ago, Facebook admitted that Mark Zuckerberg had given himself special powers to delete old Facebook messages from recipients' inboxes-a feature that's not available to ordinary Facebook users. Now, in a remarkable coincidence, the company told Techcrunch's Josh Constine it has been working on a feature to allow any user to unsend messages. The feature will be available in "several months," Facebook says.

"Until the unsend feature is released for everyone, Facebook says it won't unsend or retract any more of Zuckerberg's messages," Constine writes. There's no indication that Facebook will attempt to restore Zuckerberg messages that were already deleted, however.

This appears to be an effort to dampen outrage over Zuckerberg giving himself special powers on the platform that are not available to ordinary users. But Constine reports that Facebook "hasn't finalized exactly how the unsend feature will work."

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