How to Take Back the Photos & Videos You Send via Instagram Direct

Dec 12, 2013 11:35 PM
Dec 13, 2013 12:04 AM
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It seems that Facebook doesn't take rejection lightly. After being denied for a $3 billion buyout of Snapchat, Facebook-owned Instagram has updated their popular photo-sharing service with Instagram Direct—a new feature that allows users to send private photos/videos.

While the Instagram Direct feature is a bit underwhelming, it has a feature that might not be so obvious—temporary messaging—a feature that Snapchat thrives on. If a user deletes any pictures or videos that they've sent, they will also be deleted from the recipient's inbox.

If, for example, I send a picture to my friend and I notice that he has just viewed it, I can delete it from my Instagram and thus he will no longer be able to view it—it'll simply vanish.

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Once I delete the picture, it disappears from the recipient's Instagram Direct feed—even if they haven't seen it yet—as you can see in the screenshots below of the account I sent the photo above to.

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To delete images, just use the menu on the image page, or swipe it from the Direct feed and hit the delete button. It's that easy.

I tested out the feature with both an Android and Apple device and it works extremely fast, since the image resides on Instagram's servers. In a side-by-side comparison, the deletion process is almost instantaneous.

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