5 ms·
Privacy. It would become something like a read receipt.
by briansmith 18y ago
Privacy. It would become something like a read receipt.
- amichail 18y agoIf it's past the 5 second point and it is to a gmail address, then it could try to undo without telling you if it was successful.
- mcav 18y agoThat would be of little use; you couldn't resend or assume that they had or hadn't seen it. It would be no better than not having any undo at all.
- amichail 18y agoYou could make it a limited resource. You could only do this say once a month per recipient.
- jrockway 18y agoWhy is this modded down to -3? This isn't trolling or spam, this is a legitimate suggestion. If you disagree, you need to post a comment, not click the downmod button. HN is not Digg.
- menloparkbum 18y agoProbably because it's such a weird/dumb suggestion it is hard to distinguish from a troll.
- kyro 18y agoThis isn't a legitimate suggestion. It makes email a gimmick. I can suggest something as ridiculous by saying, well, if the other user hasn't logged into their account since receiving my message, I should be able to log into their account and delete my message.
- kyro 18y agoThat's a stupid idea. This isn't a turn based game. What the hell would once a month per recipient do for you? It wouldn't be a useful tool if it didn't provide value to the user at all times. What happens if I screw up much more than one time? Great, I was saved once, but that really didn't do much. And as for the original idea, it's stupid too. When I browse my inbox, I know exactly what's there, opened and unopened. Once it's sent to me, it's mine. I don't want to see messages appearing/disappearing from my inbox if it's not me doing the manipulating. I'm all for brainstorming and developing new ideas, but come on, give these ideas some thought.
- jrockway 18y agoThe recipient could disable this, then. By default, Gmail tells you when your contacts are online anyway... so if you want to see if someone is reading their email, you can just click their name and send them an IM. This doesn't invade their privacy any more than that does. (BTW, the undo conditional should be "seen", not read. Basically, if the recipient has logged into Gmail since you've sent the message, undo should not work.)
- mahmud 18y agoI use my gmail accounts via IMAP. You can't see me when I'm logged in.
- cousin_it 18y agoThen IMAP could count as "seeing" too.
- furyg3 18y agoGive up, this is a horrible idea. Emails can be forwarded automatically, notification of new emails can be sent to mobile devices, they can be tagged/labeled/moved/starred, add-ons or third party apps can screen scrape and process that information... all without a message being tagged as "read" and some of these without even being logged in. If you want to implement a think-it-over delay in your client, go right ahead. If you want to arrange something with your provider (Gmail) to be able to stop delivery (a la UPS) then go right ahead, but you're going to have to be mighty quick. Once its in my inbox, however, it's mine. Any provider who would do such a thing would certainly loose me as a subscriber. Your best bet is a nicely worded apology letter.