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

https://www.facebook.com/help/?faq=316575021742112#How-do-I-know-if-a-friend-has-seen-a-message-I-sent?

by mayneack • 14 years ago

158 118 14 years ago

veridies2• 14 years 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• 14 years ago

If you're roaming around on Facebook's turf, you should probably keep your privacy expectations low.

veridies2• 14 years 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• 14 years 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."

Drbble2• 14 years ago

My mail reader has a handy button to solve this case: Reply

wtracy2• 14 years ago

Note that OKCupid lets you turn that feature off.

Facebook apparently doesn't let you turn this off.

mayneack2• 14 years ago

Don't you have to pay OkCupid to turn it off?

mayneack2• 14 years ago

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

eblackburn• 14 years ago

I think I read somewhere that FB embed sound tags in their html to simulate the images trick.

mike-cardwell2• 14 years ago

Yes, they use the bgsound tag. That's one of the many tests that the Email Privacy Tester uses: https://emailprivacytester.com/

DanBlake• 14 years 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.

jeez2• 14 years ago

Orkut used to list the people who checked out your profile. Even they scrapped it long ago.

simonw• 14 years ago

LinkedIn still does, which makes me a bit nervous about surfing around on LinkedIn.

slig• 14 years 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 .

tibbon• 14 years ago

Monetization possibility? Pay to be able to see who is looking at your photos, etc? Pay to keep your message read status private?

chubot• 14 years ago

LinkedIn already does this sort of, which is annoying. People can see you browsing them if they also agree to have themselves be seen. Tit for Tat. I believe there is also a monetization component but I don't know the details. I think some of the paid plans allow you to see who is viewing you regardless of their own setting.

Though somehow I feel it's less creepy for "professional" sites vs. personal sites. I don't really care about coworkers looking for me, or if I'm looking at coworkers. But if it's friends from 10 years ago it is awkward.

gaius4• 14 years ago

Haha, OKCupid does that, you can pay for "Alpha" status that means you can stalk people's profiles without them knowing.

gaius4• 14 years ago

No real way to hide from those you want to ignore now.

Then, umm, don't add them as friends.

BBM has statuses for delivered (the message has arrived on the recipients device) and read (they have actually opened it). It's very very useful. You know at a glance where a conversation stands, you never have to "follow-up" to check a message arrived, you know if a message isn't in state D not to bother because they'll be out of reception, etc. It basically makes a BBM conversation much more natural than on SMS, or any of the big chat networks.

adgar2• 14 years ago

> Then, umm, don't add them as friends.

This completely ignores the reality of how people use Facebook, as if one could partition every personal relationship in your life into two homogeneous groups "friends" and "not friends."

Yes, I know you can have friend lists on Facebook, but this feature clearly embraces its uniformity.

mahmud2• 14 years ago

I was forced to signup to facebook because people felt offended when I said I didn't have an account. It's a given in my social circle to have an FB account; saying you can't add someone for whatever reason just means you don't want to.

furyg3• 14 years ago

"Seen" is not enough information for a sender. It immediately triggers more questions: Are they reading it now? Are they responding now? Are they ignoring me or everyone? Do they not think this is important? Where are they anyway?

I perform triage on my work Inbox several times a day, even on weekends. I have "read" your "important" message, but not really. I've prioritized it for real review on monday afternoon, after I take care of important issues (as prioritized by me). It's better for me and you if we just pretend this moment never happened.

Being in the dark sounds like a bad thing, but it's not. It's better for my mom to think that I haven't seen the long message she wrote on Facebook. After all: who knows what I'm doing?

In reality, I'm fucking around during this conference on the distraction that is Facebook, I'm touched by her message, but I can't exactly reply until tomorrow.

hazz2• 14 years ago

This feature is also available for SMS (at least with certain carriers in the UK). Putting * 0# at the start of any text message will cause the carrier to text you when the message is read. The * 0# is hidden from the other person.

omgsean2• 14 years ago

>BBM has statuses for delivered (the message has arrived on the recipients device) and read (they have actually opened it). It's very very useful.

BBM will tell you if a message was delivered successfully, but it's also capable of telling you if a message was read. The catch of course is that the user can control whether or not they want people to see if they've read the message. Ditto for iMessage.

sophacles2• 14 years ago

> No real way to hide from those you want to ignore now.

Then, umm, don't add them as friends.

Extreme point missing: "ignore now" is different than "ignore always"

Mild point missing: Sometimes it is socially expedient to "not see" a message from someone while you are busy doing other things, even though you read and saw it. Much better than going through explanations of how, "gee, I'm busy, its not that i don't like you, just got other stuff right now, and no matter how important this is to you, my stuff is more important at the moment, ill get to you when i can", as opposed to "oh hey, just saw this, what's up?"

I'm sure you'll advocate for the former method, because of some crazy strict truth thing, and people should be less emotionally sensitive and blah blah, but the fact remains: people can be pretty sensitive. This little white lie makes interactions much smoother and avoids unnecessarily hurt feelings.

actua11y• 14 years ago

Letting users see who has browsed their profile

Actually that would be a very interesting feature because you would see your profile being "browsed" by all sorts of strange sources from all over the world. Most users simply have no idea how much this information is being scraped and analysed. It would probably scare some of them away from Facebook.

The feature itself is an old one that was around before Facebook. It seems to make good sense for a site like Facebook in the early days when it was primarily used by college students. But there is no way they would implement it now in my opinion because what it would reveal to users would freak them out.

reneherse2• 14 years ago

In the realm of unintended consequences, God knows this is going to be exploited as a tool for bullying.

qq663• 14 years ago

Facebook has always been a dating site.

chris_wot3• 14 years ago

No it hasn't. I'm a very happily married man who uses Facebook to talk to friends I haven't seen in a while. I have no interest whatsoever in romance (of other people than my wife!).

drivingmenuts2• 14 years ago

Actually, it apparently started as a way for Zuckerberg to get back at all the "popular" people at Harvard, of which he was not. So dating site? Definitely not.

jaylevitt• 14 years ago

For what it's worth, AOL had this 25 years ago and never even had complaints. And yes, people came to realize that "DanBlake read this" meant DanBlake's client had read this, and you, personally, might not have seen it yet - or, if you had, you'd marked it unread for later reading.

But we had that feature from day 1; user expectations grew up around it. Introducing this kind of behavior mid-game is dangerous for all the reasons everyone's mentioned.

biafra3• 14 years 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.

GuiA2• 14 years 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

latch• 14 years ago

Not sure how this is obvious to people who don't follow XMPP draft discussions.

coryl• 14 years ago

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

vidarh2• 14 years 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.

jeez2• 14 years 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-cardwell2• 14 years 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/

solimar• 14 years ago

hurghada.export.import@gmail.com

mikeleeorg• 14 years 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.

wtracy2• 14 years ago

Still, things just got scarier for people less savvy than you.

altrego99• 14 years 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• 14 years ago

Here's another way to get around letting Facebook know you've read someone's message:

Delete your facebook account.

moron• 14 years ago

Sure, and you can cure a rash on your arm by cutting the arm off.

imrehg• 14 years ago

The only problem is, that Facebook only sends email notification after a 15-30 minutes delay. And if one clicks the little red notifications, no emails are sent at all for the messages that are newer than those 15-30 minutes....

This doesn't make a very lively conversation, and annoys the hell out of me. If someone comments my status update I have the email notification even sooner than the website tells me (can see from Gmail new email popup), but for messages I cannot enable immediate notification...... Stupefying....

rplnt• 14 years ago

Can facebook know if you read the messages through jabber?

okamiueru• 14 years ago

Wasn't there a post on FB using some kind of hidden sound file, which bypasses the "don't show images" protection?

Edit: Yes, here we go: http://pandodaily.com/2012/03/06/facebook-knows-when-you-ope...

paulsutter• 14 years 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.

biafra3• 14 years ago

Find out and report back, please!

konstruktor• 14 years 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• 14 years 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• 14 years 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• 14 years 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.

nakkiel2• 14 years ago

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

aeurielesn• 14 years ago

Should say "Was this feature helpful?"

mahmud2• 14 years ago

contempt + discontent = discontempt? ;-)

nakkiel2• 14 years ago

Wow. English really is a broken language. Thanks for the fix. I'll leave my comment as-is for posterity.

wunki• 14 years 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• 14 years 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

msg2• 14 years 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.

peteretep2• 14 years 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...

nedwin• 14 years ago

In the example image it's a message that has been sent to a group.

pwaring2• 14 years 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• 14 years 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).

peteretep2• 14 years 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• 14 years 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• 14 years 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

reneherse2• 14 years 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• 14 years 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• 14 years 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• 14 years 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• 14 years 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.

Row• 14 years 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.

fauigerzigerk• 14 years 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• 14 years ago

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

qq663• 14 years ago

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

chris_wot3• 14 years 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• 14 years ago

Facebook knows when you open your emails too. http://pandodaily.com/2012/03/06/facebook-knows-when-you-ope...

qq663• 14 years ago

yikes, creepy. Glad I use Chrome.

s_henry_paulson• 14 years 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• 14 years 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• 14 years ago

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

walru• 14 years 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.

drivingmenuts2• 14 years 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• 14 years ago

Is this only for group messages?

Spoom• 14 years 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• 14 years ago

How do I turn this off?

laconian• 14 years 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• 14 years 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.

moheeb2• 14 years 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• 14 years 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.

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

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