Mark Zuckerberg issues warning against screenshotting Facebook Messenger chats

Cheers for the heads-up, Mark

Mark Zuckerberg has warned those who love to take a sneaky screenshot of a conversation about a feature on Facebook Messenger.

The Facebook founder and Meta CEO announced that an update to the Messenger app will introduce a feature that notifies users when someone has screenshotted one of their disappearing messages.

In a post on Facebook when the feature was first introduced, he explained: “New update for end-to-end encrypted Messenger chats so you get a notification if someone screenshots a disappearing message.

“We’re also adding GIFs, stickers, and reactions to encrypted chats too.”

He shared a conversation between himself and his wife to show an example of how this will work.

“People don’t always want or need their messages to stick around and the timer controls let someone decide when their messages expire in the chat.

“We’ve updated this setting to provide more options for people in the chat to choose the amount of time before all new messages disappear, from as few as 5 seconds to as long as 24 hours.”

So now, if someone has this feature turned on and you screenshot their message for keeps, they will be notified.

The update from Zuckerberg last week was met with some mixed reviews in the comments.

One person wrote: “I really needed this feature in 2009 when I used to drunk message!”