Remember disappearing messages? Well, they are now coming to Threads, the X rival branched out of Instagram. Meta is calling them “ghost posts,” though the name is somewhat confusing, as they are not technically invisible.
What’s the big shift?
Ghost posts, as the company explains, will simply vanish from your feed 24 hours after publishing them, and will land in the archived folder after their vanishing act. The social media site already offers the flexibility to manually archive selected posts.
With ghost posts, you won’t have to go through the ordeal and have your online musings automatically archived. That’s a crucial distinction, because you can choose to unarchive posts at any point in time, unlike disappearing messages.
On Instagram, users get a disappearing messages feature, though it is limited to the DMs section, and not for public posts. Likewise, Meta has also built a disappearing messages facility in WhatsApp, where users can choose to automatically wipe their texts after 24 hours, 7 days, or 90 days.
Why is it a neat idea?
In the case of Threads, ghost posts can be shared publicly, but they have a distinct greyed-out appearance so that viewers can distinguish them from regular posts. Meta says the core idea behind ghosts is “encouraging authentic, spontaneous expression.”
Ghost posts also limit public engagement. Whenever someone replies to a ghost post, it is automatically directed to the DMs inbox as a message. As for the person who shares ghost posts, they will still be notified about engagement metrics such as likes.
Creating ghost posts on Threads is fairly straightforward. All you have to do is launch the post composer and then enable the dedicated ghost icon. This is a neat way to drive engagement on the platform, as users will be able to freely express their opinions on a hot trend, without having to worry that it will be forever out there in the public domain, or something that they have to manually delete at some point.
But do keep in mind that ghost posts don’t come with any built-in screenshot-blocking tech. So, if you’re opinions are sensitive, it’s worth sharing them in DMs as a disappearing message, or a see-once message.
