According to Mark Zuckerberg, users should avoid taking screenshots of their chats if they don’t want to be caught doing it.
Facebook’s CEO and founder said Messenger users can now receive alerts if someone else takes a picture of their conversation.
“New update for end-to-end encrypted chats in Messenger to get notified if someone sees a disappearing message,” Zuckerberg wrote in a January 2022 Facebook post.
The announcement follows another major change to Facebook Messenger that caused messages to disappear.
Already available on a number of competing social media platforms (such as Snapchat), these allow users to send messages that instantly disappear from the screen.
According to The Independent, the feature has currently been rolled out to Facebook users in the United States and is expected to be rolled out to users in Europe soon.
Snapchat has long offered screenshot notifications, and the tool has been widely used there for a number of years.
According to reports, security concerns led to the rollout of the upgrade, which will also affect Instagram, which is owned by parent company Meta.
Meanwhile, there have been mixed reactions to Zuckerberg’s post, which has received over 94,000 comments. Many have pointed out that there are several ways to fool the screenshot notification.
“Guess a screen recorder will do,” one person wrote.
“What if someone used another cell phone to take a picture of the conversation?” suggested another.
“Now we’ll use a different phone to take photos instead of screenshots,” agreed a third.
“You turn off wifi and data and then take a screenshot. You turn it back on and keep posting like a hero,” added a fourth tech-savvy user. Some expressed displeasure with the upgrade and suggested that Facebook focus its efforts on more pressing matters.
“I must say that what you have done is super cool. However… I wish the same energy was put into making REAL LIFE better for humanity instead of the virtual one. There will never be anything better than human connection and interaction,” one person wrote.