Disappearing posts on social networks are useful if you're in the habit of deleting posts with third-party tools, or if the context of your post is short-lived. Earlier this month, Threads said it was only testing ephemeral posts as an internal prototype. But now the company told TechCrunch that it's testing posts that disappear within 24 hours with a limited number of users on the social network.
The company didn't provide a statement, but a spokesperson said it's a new, casual way to share on Threads, and didn't clarify whether the experiment was geo-limited or who could enable such posts.
Alessandro Paluzzi, a reverse engineer for the app, published the temporary posts on Friday. When you tap the reply button, you'll see the time remaining, after which the post will be deleted. Threads also displays a banner at the top of the post, indicating that the thread and all replies will disappear when the time runs out. While the banner says nothing about quote replies, it turns out that quote posts have a timer like the original post, and will disappear when the timer runs out.
Image credit: Screenshot from TechCrunch
In June, Paluzzi first posted about Threads working on disappearing posts with a screenshot highlighting a 24 hour button next to the post button to make the disappearing thread public. Engineer Christ Messina also found hints of these posts in the iOS app's code earlier this month. Messina also noted that disappearing posts are not shared with the Fediverse because Threads cannot delete these posts from other servers that use ActivityPub. Threads has allowed users to share posts in the Fediverse since June.
Posts that expire after 24 hours may be useful for creators who want to share occasional off-brand or off-topic posts, or for people who want to comment on live events that may no longer be relevant once the event is over.
In the pre-Elon Musk era, Twitter launched an Instagram Stories-like disappearing post format called Fleets in 2020, but discontinued it in 2021 due to low usage.
If Threads makes ephemeral posts widely available, it could become one of the few social networks to do so among rival social networks like X, Bluesky and Mastodon.