Facebook Warns Against Screenshotting Messenger Chats Due To New Update

It won’t be a lie if we say that screenshotting has become a habit nowadays. How else are we supposed to save those hilarious memes and puns that pop up on our feeds, usually without any warning? But, at the same time, the feature can be a serious breach of privacy. So, Facebook is looking to make screenshotting a bit more transparent to both parties.

The transparency comes in the form of a warning. Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook and the CEO of Meta, said that Facebook Messenger will be receiving an update regarding this. The update will issue notifications to users when anyone in the chat screenshots a disappearing message.

It’s Only For Facebook Messenger, For Now

Zuckerberg took to Facebook to explain the new update:

“New update for end-to-end encrypted Messenger chats so you get a notification if someone screenshots a disappearing message.” He also added that Facebook will add reactions, stickers, and GIFs to chats that can be encrypted as well.

Zuckerberg gave some examples of how the feature will work through two screenshots. In it, he was chatting with Pricilla Chan, his wife. Here is how it will look:

It is similar to the feature in Snapchat. There, users receive a notification when someone grabs any pictures or messages that are set to disappear.

For those who do not know, Facebook announced disappearing messages in November 2020. They call it Vanish Mode[1]. The company has announced that, in the US, Instagram and Messenger will ‘soon’ receive it. Other countries are expected to receive at some later date.

The feature lets users set a timer for their messages, anywhere between 5 seconds to 24 hours. After the timer expires, the message will get automatically deleted. WhatsApp, another messaging platform under Meta, already has the feature as well as end-to-end encryption.

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A Security Feature

In the following update, Zuckerberg explained that the new feature is a part of their extensive investments into strengthening privacy. The post reads[2]:

“We’ve made huge investments in strengthening our approach to privacy, including rebuilding our privacy programme and our privacy review process.

We made updates to bring greater privacy to our products, including end-to-end encrypted backups and disappearing messages on WhatsApp, and end-to-end encrypted voice and video calling on Messenger.

Over the next few years, we’re focused on building out a major privacy infrastructure project that will encode our privacy commitments at a deeper level of our technical foundation to make them more durable and make product development faster in this evolving environment.”

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Users, however, had mixed opinions about the new feature. A lot of users commented about how the feature would have been invaluable during their younger days:

“I really needed this feature in 2009 when I used to drunk message!”

Another one commented:

“Thanks for the heads up, Mark! Thank you for not letting us make fools out of ourselves by taking screenshots.”

Some more comments requested Facebook to include the feature in WhatsApp as well. On the other hand, however, users were confused about the purpose of this feature. Some others also considered this to be an act of ‘snitching’:

“What is the benefit of being notified after taking a screenshot?”

“Zuckerberg is now going to show when someone took a screenshot of a convo in messenger…. what a grass.”

So what do you think of the new update? Do you think it is an improvement to existing privacy guidelines? Or, is it only going to make a simple thing into a messy subject? Let us know in the comments!

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