Facebook deletes Zuckerberg’s messages from users’ inboxes

Evidence that Facebook tampers with users inboxes has emerged, after it was revealed that some messages from co-founder Mark Zuckerberg and other executives of the company had disappeared from the recipients’ threads. Facebook claimed this was because of a retention period on Zuckerberg and other executives’ messages on Messenger, which was placed in order to increase security after emails of Sony Pictures were hacked in 2014, reports TechCrunch. However, Facebook never publicly disclosed the removal of the messages, nor did they privately inform the recipients. Currently, Facebook users can delete messages from their own inbox, but the messages continue to be displayed on the recipients chat thread. On the other hand, an email receipt of a Facebook message from 2010 reviewed by TechCrunch shows only one party’s messages, with those sent by Zuckerberg missing. Facebook has since informed that it will soon introduce an “unsend” button for users, and Zuckerberg will not be allowed to use the feature again until it is made public. According to TechCrunch, none of Facebook’s terms of service appear to give it the right to remove content from users’ accounts unless it violates the company’s community standards. Although it is standard for corporations to have data retention policies of some kind, rarely can they remove the messages from the accounts of recipients outside the company as they do not typically own the communication channel. However, this is not the case for Facebook.