Threads confirms it is experimenting with ephemeral posts

Automatically disappearing posts on social networks could be handy for users who have a habit of deleting their posts through third-party tools, or if the context of those posts is short-lived. Earlier this month, Threads said it was testing ephemeral posts only as an internal prototype. Now the company told TechCrunch that it is testing posts that disappear within 24 hours with a limited number of users.

While the company didn’t provide any statement, a spokesperson said this is a new and casual way to share on Threads. It also didn’t disclose if the experiment is region-specific or who could activate such posts.

App reverse engineer Alessandro Paluzzi published an ephemeral post on Friday. When you tap on the reply button, you an see the time remaining, after which the post will be deleted. Threads also shows a banner on top of the post indicating that the thread and all replies will disappear when the time ends. While the banner doesn’t specify anything about quoted replies, we observed that quoted posts have a timer similar to the original post and will disappear after the timer ends.

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 publish a disappearing thread. Technologist Chris Messina also found hints about these posts in the iOS app’s code earlier this month. Messina noted that disappearing posts won’t be shared with the fediverse, as Threads won’t be able to delete those posts from other ActivityPub-powered servers. Threads started allowing users to share their posts with the fediverse in June.

Posts with a 24-hour expiry could help creators who want to share an off-brand or off-topic post once in a while. They could also be useful for folks who want to post commentary on live events that might be difficult to understand out of context or that are irrelevant once the event is over.

In a pre-Elon Musk era, Twitter started an Instagram Stories-like format for disappearing posts called Fleets in 2020 but shut it down in 2021 because of low usage.

If Threads makes ephemeral posts widely available, it might be one of the only social networks among its rivals — such as X, Bluesky, and Mastodon — to do so.

The previous version of the story had a spelling mistake in Chris Messina’s name.