Threads adds ‘ghost posts’ that disappear after 24 hours

Meta’s X competitor, Threads, is presenting a new “disappearing posts” feature that will allow the app’s more than 400 million monthly users to share their thoughts and participate in conversations that are automatically archived after 24 hours.

The option, called “ghost posts,” launches Monday for Threads users worldwide.

Users will now be able to create a ghost post on mobile devices by activating the new “ghost” icon on the app’s compose screen. When the post is published, it appears on others’ timelines with a dotted conversation bubble around it to differentiate it from the rest of the content.

Other users on both desktop and mobile devices can reply to the post, but these replies are sent directly to the author’s DMs (direct messages); These responses do not appear on the timeline.

Below the post, people can see if others have liked and responded to the ghost post, indicated by smiley face icons. But only users can see the actual number of likes and replies, and who participated.

After 24 hours, posts disappear from the timeline, but are still available to the original author in the “archived” section, accessed from the main settings menu.

(Note: If you’ve turned off message requests, people you don’t follow won’t be able to reply to your ghost posts. If message requests are enabled, any replies from people you don’t follow will go to your message requests inbox. You can adjust this setting from the drop-down menu at the top right of your profile.)

Parent company Meta told TechCrunch that the feature was designed to encourage more low-risk sharing within the feed.

The addition could also give Threads a new way to challenge Elon Musk’s X, where users today have to opt for third-party, often paid, services to delete their old tweets if they don’t want to do a lot of manual work.

This isn’t the first time a text-based social network has tried to publish ephemeral posts. Before it was X, Twitter experimented with this way of sharing in 2020 with Fleets, which appeared as disappearing Stories. However, the company retired the feature the following year, citing a lack of adoption.

Meanwhile, Meta believes there is still potential in disappearing content, something that has worked well for Stories on Instagram and Facebook, for example. In Threads, the company says it hopes people will be encouraged to share more of their unfiltered thoughts, participate in live threads, or try other types of experimental content through ghost posting.

The tech giant has been rapidly iterating on Threads since its launch in July 2023, rolling out features like custom feeds, DMs, fediverse sharing (which connects Threads to open social networks like Mastodon), and most recently, support for up to 10,000 characters via text attachments, spoiler hiding tools, and the launch of interest-based communities.