Meta Threads Tests New 24-Hour Disappearing Posts Feature

By Byte Staff Insights
Facebook Chairman and CEO Mark Zuckerberg addresses the audience on "the challenges of protecting free speech while combating hate speech online, fighting misinformation, and political data privacy and security," at a forum hosted by Georgetown University's Institute of Politics and Public Service (GU Politics) and the McCourt School of Public Policy in Washington, U.S., October 17, 2019. REUTERS/Carlos Jasso

The new feature enables users to set a 24-hour expiration timer on their posts. Once the timer expires, both the post and all its associated replies will be automatically deleted from the platform.

Testing and Discovery
This feature is currently being tested with a limited number of users. Developer Alessandro Paluzzi and technologist Chris Messina were among the first to discover and report on this feature through code and interface changes in the Threads app. When users create a post with this feature, a banner appears at the top of the post indicating that it will disappear after 24 hours. The reply button also shows the remaining time before the post is deleted. While Threads supports the decentralized SNS protocol ActivityPub, allowing posts to be viewed on compatible platforms like Mastodon, posts with the 24-hour timer will not be deleted from these external servers.

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