Third Spruce Tree On The Left

From the This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things department.

Sometimes, when I'm in a hurry and need to make a note or reminder, I toss it in a message to myself on Facebook Messenger. WhatsApp and most other chat platforms let you do this (they didn't always), and it's an underutilized feature.

But once I've done or actioned that thing (or moved it where it needs to be), I want to remove it from my talk-to-myself Msgr channel. It used to be that a remove/delete icon used to be in the little popup msg right there by each message (where the forward and react/emoji icons are)

but now it is hidden in the overflow (or ...) menu. Ok, so you unsend, and now you have this:

I'm in a chat with myself. Who the hell am I talking to here? Of course I want to remove it for Everyone. Everyone is ME.

I mean, the more appropriate response would be to ditch this dialog entirely and simply have a Are you sure? prompt, but I get it; keeping this allows the same message handling behavior for all chats, regardless of the participant, and fewer test cases, etc., etc.

But come on, collapsing the confirmation dialog to a yes/no prompt if you're in a chat with yourself is a such a simple change, I'm a bit peeved they haven't done that.

function msg.delete {
 if (chat.participants.contains(currentUser) and !chat.participants.contains(!currentUser)) {
  msg.deleteShowSimpleConfirmation();
  }
 else{
  msg.deleteShowConfirmation();
  }
 }

And you know that the ticket is somewhere in the backlog at Meta. A junior dev has tried to submit that pull request a million times. It keeps getting shot down because the product manager wants to squeeze in more data mining (of your data) or AI slop because making software better for users isn't a revenue stream anymore.

I know, here I am complaining about a free-to-use software service (if you discount the value of your personal data being mined) for over 15 years... but still. Do you remember the days when the software just kept getting better and better?

Pepperidge Farms remembers.

What are you muttering about Grandpa?

And another thing! Back in my day, we wouldn't shove nine patches to production in the same week. That's just sloppy testing. We...

That's nice, Grandpa. Let's get you back to bed now.

Changelog

2025-01-02 – initial (oh yeah, here we go, forgetting it is 2025 and not 2024 every time you write a date)

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