- Facebook has been caught deleting sent messages sent by CEO Mark Zuckerberg, a feature not available to ordinary users.
- In its second response to the scandal, the social network is now saying it will roll out the "unsend" feature to everyone at some point in the future.
- But critics have accused the company of "shady" behaviour over the revelation, and some view the newly announced feature as a way to dampen backlash.
Facebook has found itself at the centre of a fresh furore over privacy and accountability after it was revealed that the social network has been quietly deleting CEO Mark Zuckerberg's sent messages — and after initially confirming the deletions, the company then tried to address the issue by abruptly announcing it would roll out the feature to all its users.
On Thursday, TechCrunch reported that some recipients of messages sent by Zuckerberg had found that these messages had disappeared from their inboxes without their knowledge or consent, while their own replies remained. The 33-year-old CEO's messages had been "unsent," a feature not available to normal people using the social network. (Unspecified other Facebook executives also have access to the feature.)
Can we really trust @facebook to run a messaging service? According to this, Messenger users cannot retract their messages from recipients’ inboxes, but the company has done this for some Zuckerberg messages. Is that the way we expect a texting service to be managed? Cc @mims https://t.co/VZ1wnmyBP3
— Walt Mossberg (@waltmossberg) April 6, 2018
The revelation sparked immediate uproar, with the company accused of setting one standard for its executives and one for everyone else, and some questioned whether the 33-year-old executive has something to hide.
Facebook now acknowledges it has a two-tiered privacy system in which regular users have to live with their dumb old texts forever and the CEO's disappear into a memory hole. Let's remember that next week when they tell Congress how seriously they take our privacy
— Casey Newton (@CaseyNewton) April 6, 2018
Well this is hella shady: Old Facebook messages from Mark Zuckerberg are mysteriously disappearing from inboxes... an extreme privacy measure that users certainly aren't afforded https://t.co/rgQso7mDK1 by @joshconstine
— Taylor Hatmaker (@tayhatmaker) April 6, 2018
The social network responded by saying the messages were deleted for security reasons in wake of the 2014 Sony hack, and on Friday told TechCrunch that the "unsend" feature now would be rolling out to all users in the coming months.
But the timing of this announcement has sparked further criticism, with critics arguing that making the feature available more widely does not address the alleged breach of trust caused by the deletion of Zuckerberg's messages.
FB does something shady, acknowledges it.
— Selena Larson (@selenalarson) April 6, 2018
FB rolls out shady capabilities to the rest of the platform. 🤔 https://t.co/rgC7ktlVls
As if this won't have terrible consequences either... https://t.co/jG4IMafd76
— Emma Sandler (@EmmaSandler) April 6, 2018
And Facebook already offers one option for users to send one-another deleting messages via Messenger: Secret Conversations. The feature allows users, with full knowledge of the other participant(s) in the conversation, to set their messages to expire after a set timeframe.
In a statement, a spokesperson told Business Insider: "We have discussed this feature several times. And people using our secret message feature in the encrypted version of Messenger have the ability to set a timer — and have their messages automatically deleted. We will now be making a broader delete message feature available. This may take some time. And until this feature is ready, we will no longer be deleting any executives' messages. We should have done this sooner — and we're sorry that we did not."
Facebook's explanation for deleting Zuckerberg's messages is on the grounds of security, following the leak of executives' emails from the hack of Sony Pictures in 2014.
"After Sony Pictures’ emails were hacked in 2014 we made a number of changes to protect our executives’ communications," a spokesperson told TechCrunch. "These included limiting the retention period for Mark’s messages in Messenger. We did so in full compliance with our legal obligations to preserve messages."
Interestingly, it appears that Facebook has been selective in which messages it has "unsent," rather than deleting them all. Will Oremus, a tech writer at Slate, tweeted that he was still able to view a message Zuckerberg had sent him in 2004.
One he sent me in 2004 is still there, for whatever that's worth.
— Will Oremus (@WillOremus) April 6, 2018
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