We already talked about it some time ago about the news to keep an eye on, and it didn’t have to pass too long: I ephemeral messages on WhatsApp now are automatically deleted after a certain period of time, which can be selected by the user. To formally announce the news available on WhatsApp is Mark Zuckerberg, CEO, and president of Meta – the new company that includes Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp.
The new feature for ephemeral messages allows you to select a time period after which all new chats will be deleted. The default selectable time period is 24 hours, 7 days, or 90 days. Activating the default option for ephemeral messages has no effect on existing chats, only for new one-to-one chats.
When a new individual chat is created, a notification appears at the top notifying chat participants that ephemeral messages are on by default: in this way, our interlocutors will not take it personally. Users have the freedom to turn off the default setting for individual chats or to disable it entirely.
Deleting messages automatically after a certain number of hours or days is certainly a great way to safeguard user privacy, and in this area, WhatsApp desperately needs to garner support. On the other hand, the whole thing about the change of Facebook name to Meta concerns precisely the image built over the years by the social network: invasive of the privacy of others. Just in these days, however, an FBI document has revealed that the American entity can obtain access to WhatsApp data: we are not talking about one-to-one chats, which thanks to end-to-end encryption are safe – at least for the moment – to anyone’s prying eyes; but the communication service used by over 2 billion people still has a long way to go when it comes to protecting privacy.
Also because alternatives considered safer, such as Telegram and Signal, are always lurking, ready to win the heart of those who consider their privacy the most important aspect to consider in a messaging service. In the meantime, run and try the new settings for ephemeral messages on WhatsApp.
It might interest you: The new UI for WhatsApp voice messages is already active for some testers.
