Social networks' automatically disappearing posts may be helpful for users who delete all their posts via third-party tools, or in case those posts belong to a context that lasts for a very short time. 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 is not providing any statement, a representative said this is a new and casual way to share on Threads, and the company also didn't indicate if the experiment was region-specific or who could enable such posts.
App reverse engineer Alessandro Paluzzi published an ephemeral post today, Friday. When you tap the reply button, the time left until the post is deleted is visible. Threads also sports a banner at the top of the post, indicating that the whole thread, as well as all replies, will disappear when the time runs out. Since the banner does not state anything regarding quoted replies, we noticed that quoted posts come with the same timer as the original post and disappear after this one has timed out, too.

Initially, in June Paluzzi reported on working threads for disappearing posts. The screenshot shared by her highlighted a 24-hour button next to the Post button to post a disappearing thread. Technologist Chris Messina also discovered such hints in the iOS app's code earlier this month. According to him, disappearing posts will not be shared with the fediverse because Threads would not be able to delete those posts from other ActivityPub-powered servers. Threads began to enable users to share their posts with the fediverse in June.
Posting things that expire after 24 hours may be helpful for creators sometimes wanting to share an off-brand or off-topic post. It may also help people who want to post commentary on live events that will be hard to make sense of outside of context or ones that are no longer relevant once the event is over.

Launched in 2020, what was Facebook's and Instagram's answer to Snapchat Stories? It was Twitter's precursor to Instagram Stories called Fleets, abandoned in 2021 due to generally poor usage.

If Threads opens up ephemeral posts to all its users, it would be one of the few so-called social networks of its kind to offer this feature, ahead of X, Bluesky, and Mastodon, for instance.

The earlier version of the story misspelled Chris Messina's name.