“From correcting a simple misspelling to adding extra context to a message, we’re excited to bring you more control over your chats,” WhatsApp said in a blog post.
IT’S HERE Message Editing is rolling out now.
You now get up to 15 minutes after sending a message to edit it. So you don’t have to worry if you duck it up pic.twitter.com/JCWNzmXwVr
— WhatsApp (@WhatsApp) May 22, 2023
The new feature may come as a relief to anyone who has experienced the dread of pressing “send” too quickly on a message with an unfortunate typo or later regretted the wording of a message sent in the heat of the moment.
Under the new policy, WhatsApp users will be able to edit messages by pressing on them and selecting the “edit” option in the drop-down menu. End-to-end encryption — a privacy feature WhatsApp is known for — will be unaffected, the company said.
WhatsApp users already have options if they are unhappy about a particular message. They can delete messages within about two days of sending them. When they do so, the message is replaced by a gray box with the words “This message was deleted.” They can also send another message correcting typos or adding context, for instance.
WhatsApp plays a sizable role in the day-to-day functions of many businesses and even governments. Users exchange about 100 billion messages per day on it. Though it is a private messaging platform, and not a public forum like Twitter, WhatsApp users can still form or join group chats with over 1,000 people or send community announcements to up to 5,000 members — meaning messages could be sent on the app to large audiences and later edited.
The move comes as Meta was fined a record $1.3 billion by the European Union for violating the bloc’s privacy laws. The company said it plans to appeal.
Other social media companies have also been experimenting with message editing. Last year, Twitter gave subscribers to its Twitter Blue service the ability to edit tweets up to five times within 30 minutes of posting them, and users of the messaging app Telegram can already edit their messages.
WhatsApp’s editing feature is the latest of several recently introduced by the company. Last week, it launched Chat Lock, a privacy feature that allows users to separate a particular conversation from their main inbox and protect it with a password or other security measure. It said the feature was well-suited for “those moments where someone else is holding your phone at the exact moment an extra special chat arrives.”
