Delete that months-old embarrassing message you’ve sent
WhatsApp may be the most ubiquitous messaging platform in the world, but it’s usually not the app to be the first in line when it comes to getting new features. After the messaging platform took ages (compared to the competition) to introduce an option that allows you to delete messages for yourself and your receiver after you’ve sent them, the company is now further building out that feature. According to WABetaInfo, you might soon be able to delete any old message you want to, not just those you’ve sent recently.
When WhatsApp first introduced the option to delete old messages, it came with a strict time limit of only eight minutes, but the developers have since extended the cut-off time to roughly one hour. It looks like this might change in an upcoming version of WhatsApp yet again, with WABetaInfo able to delete a message sent as long as three months ago after digging into the latest beta’s code, version 2.21.23.1.
Like any under-development feature that hasn’t officially rolled out yet, this behavior might change before WhatsApp properly pushes it live, though. For all we know currently, the lack of the time limit could be a bug, or the developers might be experimenting with different cut-off options internally. Even if the feature goes live as demoed, it’s possible that only messages sent after the update will be eligible to be deleted.
As for the competition, Telegram has long supported deleting messages for you and others, and the same goes for Signal. In contrast to Telegram, which makes deleted messages disappear into oblivion without a trace, WhatsApp leaves a note that a message has been deleted in the chat. That feels like a more honest approach, and it might help detect gaslighting attempts and other dishonest communication practices.
Thanks: Moshe
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