18 ms·

Facebook now informs the sender if you've read their message

158 points by mayneack 14y ago

veridies 14y ago
Ugh. The feature has no purpose besides notifying people you're ignoring or haven't yet gotten around to. Not to mention that it's way too close to OKCupid's design where you can see visitors; I'd like to browse with some semblance of privacy.
- shaggyfrog 14y ago
  If you're roaming around on Facebook's turf, you should probably keep your privacy expectations low.
  - veridies 14y ago
    Admittedly, and I avoid it as much as possible. But while pretty much everyone assumes that anything they do online will be public, they don't assume that anywhere they go will be public too. Passive browsing has a very strong expectation of privacy and if you dismantle that without strong warnings ahead of time, some people are going to get burned badly.
- drostie 14y ago
  I can see a usage case especially in the native environment for Facebook -- college students. So, you tell someone, "Hey, remember, you're playing with us in the Frisbee competition tomorrow over in Rochester. Meet me at 9am, North Campus." The next morning before you drive off, you check for messages and they haven't responded, but it's marked as "seen", which is some small comfort -- you still don't know that they woke up in time, but otherwise you can expect them to remember. It's actually also possible to implement this in email, although the loading of remote images is disabled by default in Gmail. Any email which contains a link can point to a web service which notifies someone, "hey, this page was accessed."
  - Drbble 14y ago
    My mail reader has a handy button to solve this case: Reply
- wtracy 14y ago
  Note that OKCupid lets you turn that feature off. Facebook apparently doesn't let you turn this off.
  - mayneack 14y ago
    Don't you have to pay OkCupid to turn it off?
    - nostrademons 14y ago
      For visitors? Nope. You just have to pay if you want to see your visitors without being seen yourself.
mayneack 14y ago
I also haven't found a way to turn it off.
- eblackburn 14y ago
  I think I read somewhere that FB embed sound tags in their html to simulate the images trick.
  - mike-cardwell 14y ago
    Yes, they use the bgsound tag. That's one of the many tests that the Email Privacy Tester uses: https://emailprivacytester.com/ https://emailprivacytester.com/
DanBlake 14y ago
This is a very slippery slope for FB, I feel. No real way to hide from those you want to ignore now. Next up: Let you see who is searching for you / browsed your photo albums / etc.. ??? Very "badoo-esque" I think- Not that its a bad thing, it just feels out of place here. FB is not a dating site.
- jeez 14y ago
  Orkut used to list the people who checked out your profile. Even they scrapped it long ago.
  - simonw 14y ago
    LinkedIn still does, which makes me a bit nervous about surfing around on LinkedIn.
    - deleted 14y ago
      [deleted]
    - pwaring 14y ago
      You can turn that LinkedIn feature off, or at least they claim that you can.
    - andreyf 14y ago
      You can set it to show you as "Anonymous LinkedIn user", but then you can't see who looks at your profile, either.
  - slig 14y ago
    AFAIK, it's still there. And they placed this "feature" without notice, so people woke up with a list os his/hers last visitors. It's very awkward .
    - mayanksinghal 14y ago
      There was an option to turn it off, at least it was there 4 years ago. You could make your visits invisible - but you were then unable to see who visited your profile. Seems fair to me.
biafra 14y ago
Isn't the messaging xmpp based? Does my xmpp client tell fb that I read a message? I understand this can work on the web where fb has full control.
- GuiA 14y ago
  Yes, FB messaging is XMPP, and whether your client tells fb or not obviously depends on your client, specifically whether it implements XEP-0184 (still in draft) or not: http://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0184.html http://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0184.html
  - latch 14y ago
    Not sure how this is obvious to people who don't follow XMPP draft discussions.
    - GuiA 14y ago
      Sorry, didn't mean to be rude. I meant that it was obvious that it was up to the client to send read receipts or not (you could easily just take an open source XMPP client and comment out the line that sends read receipts), not that the relevant XMPP draft was obvious.
coryl 14y ago
IMO, this isn't a big deal? Don't most mobile messaging apps do this, like BBM, Kik, etc etc.?
- vidarh 14y ago
  There's a different starting expectation: Anything that fits in the "instant messaging" batch is often used when people wants immediate interaction. It annoys me to no end - being old school enough to finding it completely acceptable to send a question to someone over IM, and expect them to get it and deal with it later, while many of my co-workers etc. will start any IM conversation with "are you there?" or "hi" and expect a back and forth to confirm this is "live" before telling me what it's about, and effectively removing the choice of dealing with it right away. That's a substitute for the system telling them the message has or will be read. With that usage pattern - as a slightly less intrusive substitute for a phone call or face to face encounter - knowing that you're not talking to an empty chair helps. This change effectively shifts Facebook messages further towards the IM spectrum away from the e-mail/letter spectrum. Many e-mail systems support read-receipts, but most people never use them, exactly because a large part of sending an e-mail is that you acknowledge the recipient may want to deal with the message in their own time, or perhaps not at all. And that's probably why Facebook wants this change: To increase user engagement by getting users to feel more of an obligation to reply and to reply quickly.
jeez 14y ago
There's the email hack where you can insert an image and check the server logs later to see if (and how many times) it was viewed. Its a hack, and not a feature, for a reason. :\
- mike-cardwell 14y ago
  Most sane email clients have automatic loading of remote content disabled by default. The iOS client doesn't. There are loads of similar tricks to the img tag one. Many clients which attempt to disable the automatic loading of remote content fail in different ways. I built an automated web based tool which sends you a specially crafted email which attempts many of these tricks. You can see it here: https://emailprivacytester.com/ https://emailprivacytester.com/
- solimar 14y ago
  hurghada.export.import@gmail.com
mikeleeorg 14y ago
Here's a way to get around letting Facebook know you've read someone's message: I'm one of those people who likes the little red notifications showing when I've received a FB message. I don't check FB's messages often, so without that notification, I forget to follow up on FB messages. My work-around is to have FB send me an email notification whenever someone writes me a message via FB. Then I read that message in my email reader instead of through the FB UI. I also have all email images turned off for performance and privacy reasons. It seems to me you could do this too, and avoid having FB inform the sender that you've read their message.
- wtracy 14y ago
  Still, things just got scarier for people less savvy than you.
  - altrego99 14y ago
    Also while it works, it's slightly cumbersome - one will have to ensure not to give in to the temptation of clicking the red notifications, and to ignore the FB Messenger app in Android. The FB Messenger for Android is a tremendous app that I have been using, over other apps, ironically the main reason is because it's a nice chatting software which does not reveal if you're online and if you've read any message. Now I will have to look for an alternative - Google+ invisibility may be the one.
- gaving 14y ago
  Here's another way to get around letting Facebook know you've read someone's message: Delete your facebook account.
  - moron 14y ago
    Sure, and you can cure a rash on your arm by cutting the arm off.
    - moheeb 14y ago
paulsutter 14y ago
If I have Facebook in a background tab, and a message appears, will it say i read it? I keep Facebook in a background tab 24x7, but only look at Facebook about once every 2 or 3 days.
- biafra 14y ago
  Find out and report back, please!
konstruktor 14y ago
Aren't they shooting themselves in the foot with this? People seem to love checking out their acquaintances, so enabling some mild "stalking" seems to be part of FB's appeal. If that becomes visible and thus awkward, it could make them a less attractive platform.
dewiz 14y ago
it used to be like this with phpbb, so it is not a news really. but as bad as phpbb was, this is annoying too. fb should make it an option in the privacy settings, as it is with email systems where you can opt out from the message receipts.
- FuzzyDunlop 14y ago
  It still is, as of the latest version. Messages can be edited or deleted up until the point where they've been read. Then they're moved from your 'outbox' to a 'sent' folder. I'm not entirely certain of what my opinion on this sort of thing really is.
Valmount 14y ago
There have been times where I've actually wished they had a feature like this. Now that it's here, can't say I care for it much. In some cases, this denies me the opportunity to move at my own pace and come up with a well advised response.
nakkiel 14y ago
Want to show your discontempt? Click on "Was this answer useful?" Then, "I didn't like the answer" (from memory).
- aeurielesn 14y ago
  Should say "Was this feature helpful?"
- mahmud 14y ago
  contempt + discontent = discontempt? ;-)
  - nakkiel 14y ago
    Wow. English really is a broken language. Thanks for the fix. I'll leave my comment as-is for posterity.
wunki 14y ago
No! It's of no interest to the sender when somebody has read their message. When building our invitation application we also had a feature that showed when somebody opened your invitation. But we quickly noticed that it was annoying because when you knew the sender would be notified, you wouldn't open the invitation to read it if you weren't sure you had the time to respond. It's the same with WhatsApp, the "social" pressure to respond because the other person knows you have read the message.
djhworld 14y ago
this is just for messages directed at people personally. I don't see it as being that much different to read receipts or any other form of messaging software
- msg 14y ago
  The difference is you can't turn it off. People have different expectations when using this software. I think I've logged on once in the past 6 months. A heavy user who sends me a message and expects, but does not see, a read receipt may think I'm deliberately giving them the cold shoulder. I want the freedom to not respond or read in privacy. Let them think it was spam filtered or lost in the shuffle. Yet another reason Facebook is not for me.
  - peteretep 14y ago
    Sounds like quite the opposite. If I sent you a message, and saw there was no read receipt, I'll assume you haven't logged in. Without it, I assume you read it and didn't reply...
    - msg 14y ago
      Like I said, people have different expectations. You can also see when people are logged into Facebook because they are available to chat with. How would you react if they were logged in but you didn't have a read receipt? Or there was a receipt but they didn't respond? Anyhow, this is all just proving the point. Read receipts introduce a piece of "evidence" that is bound to be misinterpreted. So I don't like them and they're yet another feature hostile to some customers in Facebook.
- nedwin 14y ago
  In the example image it's a message that has been sent to a group.
- pwaring 14y ago
  Except you can block read receipts in most sane mail clients (Thunderbird has options for always/prompt/never for example). It doesn't appear that there is a way to block your messages being marked as 'seen' on Facebook, unless it's buried deep in the frequently-changing privacy settings.
FaceKicker 14y ago
Has anyone seen this happen in chat yet (I don't use FB chat much)? The example image shows it in a group chat (and the text also says "That way, you always know who got the message, and who didn't.", which semi-implies multiple receivers) - does it also happen with just one-on-one chat or is it possible it only happens in group chat? Doing this in group chat seems at least somewhat less invasive, as each person is less likely to be expected to reply in a group chat (and hence wouldn't be as likely to be interpreted as "ignoring" the sender and might have more common legitimate purposes like, as the example image shows, updating people on meeting times/locations).
- peteretep 14y ago
  Yes, I saw it happen in one to one chat last night. It was super useful, as the person on the other end was on a flakey connection...
- jamalex 14y ago
  Yes, I saw it a day or two ago, in a one-on-one chat. And now I feel bad for not having responded to someone else when I was busy, as they may have received a similar notice.
- agscala 14y ago
  Facebook messenger on my android phone has been showing me if my messages have been read by the recipient for a while now. They must have enabled it on mobile before they did in the browser
reneherse 14y ago
AOL did this back in the 90's for any mail sent within the confines of its walled garden. You could also unsend a message. At the time, I believe the purpose was to engender a sense of trust in "the new medium of email." Obviously that's not the purpose of the implementation on FB. So, what is the purpose? Maybe it's the extremely late hour, but my cynical feeling is that this seems really a psychologically driven feature... driven by some kind of awkward, socially obsessive mindset.
- gurkendoktor 14y ago
  I use iMessage, WhatsApp and LINE are really big around me too. All three have this feature, and it's clear that FB would rather have us use their short messaging infrastructure instead. So even if it's silly, the competition started being silly.
- nicknyc 14y ago
  If someone hasn't read your message in a month that means a different thing than no response for a month. Some would assume you said the wrong thing, etc. Also remember Facebook is software- which can fail. Maybe this is also a way to help reduce message delivery failure- with email you might get a message bounce back if the send failed. If a Facebook message failed to deliver due to bugs, hardware failure, etc how would a user know? If they don't know they probably won't complain to the FB message API developer/manager who has a "can't reproduce", "intermittent", "sometimes occurs" bug.
  - loceng 14y ago
    If it's important you'll find another way to contact them. The logic behind using it to show if they fail or not doesn't work. The system that would identify if a message was sent would be tied into the messaging system; They should have this if it's possible, though they don't need to make the results known.
quadrant 14y ago
A SpySpace style add on for Facebook (a hacked together java/action/?script exploiting piece of code that trapped users viewing your page, their ip, clipboard, etc) would net Facebook a large chunk of revenue as an add on feature. I loved having SpySpace installed, certainly made MySpace, and trolling friends based off the contents of their clipboards, a whole lot of (somewhat nebulous) fun.
whateveeer 14y ago
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- zuralski 14y ago
  Really? The last time I checked it was filling for an IPO. And a lucrative one...
Row 14y ago
This is like those horrible read receipts in Outlook. When I read and reply to a message is my business. Facebook is just going to create an atmosphere where the sender gets miffed because the receiver read the message and didn't reply for x hours/days and the receiver is going to resent the sender and Facebook for creating this obligation which they have to deal with now so as not to offend the sender.
tomdtpink 14y ago
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- AndrewDucker 14y ago
  Interesting. Clearly part of a concerted attempt to disrupt HN. I'll be interested to see how the existing systems copes with it.
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
fauigerzigerk 14y ago
It's amazing how Facebook can still come up with more reasons for me not to use them. For me, it's a feature of asynchronous communication that you're not pressured to read it immediately and you get think time between reading and replying without the other end getting agitated.
manmal 14y ago
Well, there goes my use of Facebook messages. There is a reason SMS and email read-notifications were failures.
qq66 14y ago
You can have Facebook email your messages to you, and just read them there without the other party knowing.
- chris_wot 14y ago
  And then the other party doesn't think you've read the message and wonders why. That's a fairly fatal flaw in your scheme :-)
- sp332 14y ago
  Facebook knows when you open your emails too. http://pandodaily.com/2012/03/06/facebook-knows-when-you-open-their-emails-how-creepy-silent-sounds/ http://pandodaily.com/2012/03/06/facebook-knows-when-you-ope...
  - qq66 14y ago
    yikes, creepy. Glad I use Chrome.
s_henry_paulson 14y ago
As someone that doesn't like facebook, I find this a very useful feature. I rarely ever check facebook, don't have it on my phone, don't get their e-mails, etc, but haven't deleted it just yet because maybe there are some people from my past that I don't communicate with that I might like to some day. People who are on facebook all the time don't understand that not everyone who has an account will always see their messages, and even though I've repeatedly told family members to e-mail me, they still try to send me messages. This feature would help people to realize that I'm not actually reading facebook messages on a regular basis. People that want to contact me, know how to contact me. Family members.. well they're not always the brightest bunch.
mfringel 14y ago
I think the right answer might be writing a tool that uses the Facebook API to "open" your message and immediately reply saying "OpenAllMessages just opened your message. The actual person will read it when they get around to it."
- dclowd9901 14y ago
  While a cheeky solution, I can almost guarantee FB would block it, citing some sort of TOS clause.
walru 14y ago
What's funny is, not having this feature is one of the main reasons I moved over from myspace. Having your every message now visibly tracked is not a good way to entice new people, who are worried about their privacy, to stick around. Does this move mean that FB has reached its saturation point and now the best way to instantiate more clicks is to prey on our insecurities? Who knows. However, it does feel like I've read this script somewhere before. If we're lucky, maybe next we can see how many times our profile has been viewed.
- drivingmenuts 14y ago
  By this action, I think they're assuming a closeness in relationships that doesn't always exist. I tend to read messages from close actual friends fairly quickly, but messages from people I have friended who aren't really friends will get read ... maybe: maybe next week, maybe in a couple of months, maybe never. I don't feel that those relationships need any notification of this either.
jeggers5 14y ago
Is this only for group messages?
Spoom 14y ago
Good thing I get Facebook messages by email. Even if they're using an email image bug to set the "read" status, I'll just avoid downloading images. Sorry, but when I read your message to me is up to me, and whether or not I read it is private.
dominik 14y ago
How do I turn this off?
laconian 14y ago
I've used other online communities that have implemented this feature. It's creepy, esp. when you get messages from people that you would prefer to silently ignore.
K2h 14y ago
This is like Outlooks read-receipts, which I refuse to use or [immediately] acknowledge when someone attaches one. For those that want to be slightly evil, save all these messages in your archived folder, and at the end of the year - select all, read all: and you'll hear screams from across the office from all the guilty parties that attach read receipts as they will get their inbox flooded from all of your confirmations.
- moheeb 14y ago
  I love this suggestion! I always leave Outlook set to 'Prompt' me for read receipts. That way I know which people are annoying. I always DENY. Read-Receipts have to be the most passive aggressive feature ever coded.
alexweber 14y ago
FWIW, I tested this a bit with a friend, and it only shows that you've read the message if you're signed in to FB chat. I always stay offline and the sender was not able to see the read-receipt.

158 points by mayneack 14y ago

Ugh. The feature has no purpose besides notifying people you're ignoring or haven't yet gotten around to. Not to mention that it's way too close to OKCupid's design where you can see visitors; I'd like to browse with some semblance of privacy.

shaggyfrog 14y ago
If you're roaming around on Facebook's turf, you should probably keep your privacy expectations low.
- veridies 14y ago
  Admittedly, and I avoid it as much as possible. But while pretty much everyone assumes that anything they do online will be public, they don't assume that anywhere they go will be public too. Passive browsing has a very strong expectation of privacy and if you dismantle that without strong warnings ahead of time, some people are going to get burned badly.
drostie 14y ago
I can see a usage case especially in the native environment for Facebook -- college students. So, you tell someone, "Hey, remember, you're playing with us in the Frisbee competition tomorrow over in Rochester. Meet me at 9am, North Campus." The next morning before you drive off, you check for messages and they haven't responded, but it's marked as "seen", which is some small comfort -- you still don't know that they woke up in time, but otherwise you can expect them to remember. It's actually also possible to implement this in email, although the loading of remote images is disabled by default in Gmail. Any email which contains a link can point to a web service which notifies someone, "hey, this page was accessed."
- Drbble 14y ago
  My mail reader has a handy button to solve this case: Reply
wtracy 14y ago
Note that OKCupid lets you turn that feature off. Facebook apparently doesn't let you turn this off.
- mayneack 14y ago
  Don't you have to pay OkCupid to turn it off?
  - nostrademons 14y ago
    For visitors? Nope. You just have to pay if you want to see your visitors without being seen yourself.

mayneack 14y ago

I also haven't found a way to turn it off.

eblackburn 14y ago
I think I read somewhere that FB embed sound tags in their html to simulate the images trick.
- mike-cardwell 14y ago
  Yes, they use the bgsound tag. That's one of the many tests that the Email Privacy Tester uses: https://emailprivacytester.com/ https://emailprivacytester.com/

DanBlake 14y ago

This is a very slippery slope for FB, I feel. No real way to hide from those you want to ignore now. Next up: Let you see who is searching for you / browsed your photo albums / etc.. ??? Very "badoo-esque" I think- Not that its a bad thing, it just feels out of place here. FB is not a dating site.

jeez 14y ago
Orkut used to list the people who checked out your profile. Even they scrapped it long ago.
- simonw 14y ago
  LinkedIn still does, which makes me a bit nervous about surfing around on LinkedIn.
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
  - pwaring 14y ago
    You can turn that LinkedIn feature off, or at least they claim that you can.
  - andreyf 14y ago
    You can set it to show you as "Anonymous LinkedIn user", but then you can't see who looks at your profile, either.
- slig 14y ago
  AFAIK, it's still there. And they placed this "feature" without notice, so people woke up with a list os his/hers last visitors. It's very awkward .
  - mayanksinghal 14y ago
    There was an option to turn it off, at least it was there 4 years ago. You could make your visits invisible - but you were then unable to see who visited your profile. Seems fair to me.

biafra 14y ago

Isn't the messaging xmpp based? Does my xmpp client tell fb that I read a message? I understand this can work on the web where fb has full control.

GuiA 14y ago
Yes, FB messaging is XMPP, and whether your client tells fb or not obviously depends on your client, specifically whether it implements XEP-0184 (still in draft) or not: http://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0184.html http://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0184.html
- latch 14y ago
  Not sure how this is obvious to people who don't follow XMPP draft discussions.
  - GuiA 14y ago
    Sorry, didn't mean to be rude. I meant that it was obvious that it was up to the client to send read receipts or not (you could easily just take an open source XMPP client and comment out the line that sends read receipts), not that the relevant XMPP draft was obvious.

coryl 14y ago

IMO, this isn't a big deal? Don't most mobile messaging apps do this, like BBM, Kik, etc etc.?

vidarh 14y ago
There's a different starting expectation: Anything that fits in the "instant messaging" batch is often used when people wants immediate interaction. It annoys me to no end - being old school enough to finding it completely acceptable to send a question to someone over IM, and expect them to get it and deal with it later, while many of my co-workers etc. will start any IM conversation with "are you there?" or "hi" and expect a back and forth to confirm this is "live" before telling me what it's about, and effectively removing the choice of dealing with it right away. That's a substitute for the system telling them the message has or will be read. With that usage pattern - as a slightly less intrusive substitute for a phone call or face to face encounter - knowing that you're not talking to an empty chair helps. This change effectively shifts Facebook messages further towards the IM spectrum away from the e-mail/letter spectrum. Many e-mail systems support read-receipts, but most people never use them, exactly because a large part of sending an e-mail is that you acknowledge the recipient may want to deal with the message in their own time, or perhaps not at all. And that's probably why Facebook wants this change: To increase user engagement by getting users to feel more of an obligation to reply and to reply quickly.

jeez 14y ago

There's the email hack where you can insert an image and check the server logs later to see if (and how many times) it was viewed. Its a hack, and not a feature, for a reason. :\

mike-cardwell 14y ago
Most sane email clients have automatic loading of remote content disabled by default. The iOS client doesn't. There are loads of similar tricks to the img tag one. Many clients which attempt to disable the automatic loading of remote content fail in different ways. I built an automated web based tool which sends you a specially crafted email which attempts many of these tricks. You can see it here: https://emailprivacytester.com/ https://emailprivacytester.com/
solimar 14y ago
hurghada.export.import@gmail.com

mikeleeorg 14y ago

Here's a way to get around letting Facebook know you've read someone's message: I'm one of those people who likes the little red notifications showing when I've received a FB message. I don't check FB's messages often, so without that notification, I forget to follow up on FB messages. My work-around is to have FB send me an email notification whenever someone writes me a message via FB. Then I read that message in my email reader instead of through the FB UI. I also have all email images turned off for performance and privacy reasons. It seems to me you could do this too, and avoid having FB inform the sender that you've read their message.

wtracy 14y ago
Still, things just got scarier for people less savvy than you.
- altrego99 14y ago
  Also while it works, it's slightly cumbersome - one will have to ensure not to give in to the temptation of clicking the red notifications, and to ignore the FB Messenger app in Android. The FB Messenger for Android is a tremendous app that I have been using, over other apps, ironically the main reason is because it's a nice chatting software which does not reveal if you're online and if you've read any message. Now I will have to look for an alternative - Google+ invisibility may be the one.
gaving 14y ago
Here's another way to get around letting Facebook know you've read someone's message: Delete your facebook account.
- moron 14y ago
  Sure, and you can cure a rash on your arm by cutting the arm off.
  - moheeb 14y ago

paulsutter 14y ago

If I have Facebook in a background tab, and a message appears, will it say i read it? I keep Facebook in a background tab 24x7, but only look at Facebook about once every 2 or 3 days.

biafra 14y ago
Find out and report back, please!

konstruktor 14y ago

Aren't they shooting themselves in the foot with this? People seem to love checking out their acquaintances, so enabling some mild "stalking" seems to be part of FB's appeal. If that becomes visible and thus awkward, it could make them a less attractive platform.

dewiz 14y ago

it used to be like this with phpbb, so it is not a news really. but as bad as phpbb was, this is annoying too. fb should make it an option in the privacy settings, as it is with email systems where you can opt out from the message receipts.

FuzzyDunlop 14y ago
It still is, as of the latest version. Messages can be edited or deleted up until the point where they've been read. Then they're moved from your 'outbox' to a 'sent' folder. I'm not entirely certain of what my opinion on this sort of thing really is.

Valmount 14y ago

There have been times where I've actually wished they had a feature like this. Now that it's here, can't say I care for it much. In some cases, this denies me the opportunity to move at my own pace and come up with a well advised response.

nakkiel 14y ago

Want to show your discontempt? Click on "Was this answer useful?" Then, "I didn't like the answer" (from memory).

aeurielesn 14y ago
Should say "Was this feature helpful?"
mahmud 14y ago
contempt + discontent = discontempt? ;-)
- nakkiel 14y ago
  Wow. English really is a broken language. Thanks for the fix. I'll leave my comment as-is for posterity.

wunki 14y ago

No! It's of no interest to the sender when somebody has read their message. When building our invitation application we also had a feature that showed when somebody opened your invitation. But we quickly noticed that it was annoying because when you knew the sender would be notified, you wouldn't open the invitation to read it if you weren't sure you had the time to respond. It's the same with WhatsApp, the "social" pressure to respond because the other person knows you have read the message.

djhworld 14y ago

this is just for messages directed at people personally. I don't see it as being that much different to read receipts or any other form of messaging software

msg 14y ago
The difference is you can't turn it off. People have different expectations when using this software. I think I've logged on once in the past 6 months. A heavy user who sends me a message and expects, but does not see, a read receipt may think I'm deliberately giving them the cold shoulder. I want the freedom to not respond or read in privacy. Let them think it was spam filtered or lost in the shuffle. Yet another reason Facebook is not for me.
- peteretep 14y ago
  Sounds like quite the opposite. If I sent you a message, and saw there was no read receipt, I'll assume you haven't logged in. Without it, I assume you read it and didn't reply...
  - msg 14y ago
    Like I said, people have different expectations. You can also see when people are logged into Facebook because they are available to chat with. How would you react if they were logged in but you didn't have a read receipt? Or there was a receipt but they didn't respond? Anyhow, this is all just proving the point. Read receipts introduce a piece of "evidence" that is bound to be misinterpreted. So I don't like them and they're yet another feature hostile to some customers in Facebook.
nedwin 14y ago
In the example image it's a message that has been sent to a group.
pwaring 14y ago
Except you can block read receipts in most sane mail clients (Thunderbird has options for always/prompt/never for example). It doesn't appear that there is a way to block your messages being marked as 'seen' on Facebook, unless it's buried deep in the frequently-changing privacy settings.

FaceKicker 14y ago

Has anyone seen this happen in chat yet (I don't use FB chat much)? The example image shows it in a group chat (and the text also says "That way, you always know who got the message, and who didn't.", which semi-implies multiple receivers) - does it also happen with just one-on-one chat or is it possible it only happens in group chat? Doing this in group chat seems at least somewhat less invasive, as each person is less likely to be expected to reply in a group chat (and hence wouldn't be as likely to be interpreted as "ignoring" the sender and might have more common legitimate purposes like, as the example image shows, updating people on meeting times/locations).

peteretep 14y ago
Yes, I saw it happen in one to one chat last night. It was super useful, as the person on the other end was on a flakey connection...
jamalex 14y ago
Yes, I saw it a day or two ago, in a one-on-one chat. And now I feel bad for not having responded to someone else when I was busy, as they may have received a similar notice.
agscala 14y ago
Facebook messenger on my android phone has been showing me if my messages have been read by the recipient for a while now. They must have enabled it on mobile before they did in the browser

reneherse 14y ago

AOL did this back in the 90's for any mail sent within the confines of its walled garden. You could also unsend a message. At the time, I believe the purpose was to engender a sense of trust in "the new medium of email." Obviously that's not the purpose of the implementation on FB. So, what is the purpose? Maybe it's the extremely late hour, but my cynical feeling is that this seems really a psychologically driven feature... driven by some kind of awkward, socially obsessive mindset.

gurkendoktor 14y ago
I use iMessage, WhatsApp and LINE are really big around me too. All three have this feature, and it's clear that FB would rather have us use their short messaging infrastructure instead. So even if it's silly, the competition started being silly.
nicknyc 14y ago
If someone hasn't read your message in a month that means a different thing than no response for a month. Some would assume you said the wrong thing, etc. Also remember Facebook is software- which can fail. Maybe this is also a way to help reduce message delivery failure- with email you might get a message bounce back if the send failed. If a Facebook message failed to deliver due to bugs, hardware failure, etc how would a user know? If they don't know they probably won't complain to the FB message API developer/manager who has a "can't reproduce", "intermittent", "sometimes occurs" bug.
- loceng 14y ago
  If it's important you'll find another way to contact them. The logic behind using it to show if they fail or not doesn't work. The system that would identify if a message was sent would be tied into the messaging system; They should have this if it's possible, though they don't need to make the results known.

quadrant 14y ago

A SpySpace style add on for Facebook (a hacked together java/action/?script exploiting piece of code that trapped users viewing your page, their ip, clipboard, etc) would net Facebook a large chunk of revenue as an add on feature. I loved having SpySpace installed, certainly made MySpace, and trolling friends based off the contents of their clipboards, a whole lot of (somewhat nebulous) fun.

whateveeer 14y ago

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zuralski 14y ago
Really? The last time I checked it was filling for an IPO. And a lucrative one...

Row 14y ago

This is like those horrible read receipts in Outlook. When I read and reply to a message is my business. Facebook is just going to create an atmosphere where the sender gets miffed because the receiver read the message and didn't reply for x hours/days and the receiver is going to resent the sender and Facebook for creating this obligation which they have to deal with now so as not to offend the sender.

tomdtpink 14y ago

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AndrewDucker 14y ago
Interesting. Clearly part of a concerted attempt to disrupt HN. I'll be interested to see how the existing systems copes with it.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]

fauigerzigerk 14y ago

It's amazing how Facebook can still come up with more reasons for me not to use them. For me, it's a feature of asynchronous communication that you're not pressured to read it immediately and you get think time between reading and replying without the other end getting agitated.

manmal 14y ago

Well, there goes my use of Facebook messages. There is a reason SMS and email read-notifications were failures.

qq66 14y ago

You can have Facebook email your messages to you, and just read them there without the other party knowing.

chris_wot 14y ago
And then the other party doesn't think you've read the message and wonders why. That's a fairly fatal flaw in your scheme :-)
sp332 14y ago
Facebook knows when you open your emails too. http://pandodaily.com/2012/03/06/facebook-knows-when-you-open-their-emails-how-creepy-silent-sounds/ http://pandodaily.com/2012/03/06/facebook-knows-when-you-ope...
- qq66 14y ago
  yikes, creepy. Glad I use Chrome.

s_henry_paulson 14y ago

As someone that doesn't like facebook, I find this a very useful feature. I rarely ever check facebook, don't have it on my phone, don't get their e-mails, etc, but haven't deleted it just yet because maybe there are some people from my past that I don't communicate with that I might like to some day. People who are on facebook all the time don't understand that not everyone who has an account will always see their messages, and even though I've repeatedly told family members to e-mail me, they still try to send me messages. This feature would help people to realize that I'm not actually reading facebook messages on a regular basis. People that want to contact me, know how to contact me. Family members.. well they're not always the brightest bunch.

mfringel 14y ago

I think the right answer might be writing a tool that uses the Facebook API to "open" your message and immediately reply saying "OpenAllMessages just opened your message. The actual person will read it when they get around to it."

dclowd9901 14y ago
While a cheeky solution, I can almost guarantee FB would block it, citing some sort of TOS clause.

walru 14y ago

What's funny is, not having this feature is one of the main reasons I moved over from myspace. Having your every message now visibly tracked is not a good way to entice new people, who are worried about their privacy, to stick around. Does this move mean that FB has reached its saturation point and now the best way to instantiate more clicks is to prey on our insecurities? Who knows. However, it does feel like I've read this script somewhere before. If we're lucky, maybe next we can see how many times our profile has been viewed.

drivingmenuts 14y ago
By this action, I think they're assuming a closeness in relationships that doesn't always exist. I tend to read messages from close actual friends fairly quickly, but messages from people I have friended who aren't really friends will get read ... maybe: maybe next week, maybe in a couple of months, maybe never. I don't feel that those relationships need any notification of this either.

jeggers5 14y ago

Is this only for group messages?

Spoom 14y ago

Good thing I get Facebook messages by email. Even if they're using an email image bug to set the "read" status, I'll just avoid downloading images. Sorry, but when I read your message to me is up to me, and whether or not I read it is private.

dominik 14y ago

How do I turn this off?

laconian 14y ago

I've used other online communities that have implemented this feature. It's creepy, esp. when you get messages from people that you would prefer to silently ignore.

K2h 14y ago

This is like Outlooks read-receipts, which I refuse to use or [immediately] acknowledge when someone attaches one. For those that want to be slightly evil, save all these messages in your archived folder, and at the end of the year - select all, read all: and you'll hear screams from across the office from all the guilty parties that attach read receipts as they will get their inbox flooded from all of your confirmations.

moheeb 14y ago
I love this suggestion! I always leave Outlook set to 'Prompt' me for read receipts. That way I know which people are annoying. I always DENY. Read-Receipts have to be the most passive aggressive feature ever coded.

alexweber 14y ago

FWIW, I tested this a bit with a friend, and it only shows that you've read the message if you're signed in to FB chat. I always stay offline and the sender was not able to see the read-receipt.