Threads adds ‘ghost posts’ that disappear after 24 hours

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

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

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

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

Underneath the post, people can see if others have liked and replied to the ghost post, which is indicated by smiley-faced icons. But only posters can see the actual number of likes and replies, and who engaged.

After 24 hours, the posts disappear from the timeline, but are still available to the original poster from 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 go to your message request inbox instead. You can adjust these settings from the drop-down menu in the top right of your profile.)

Parent company Meta told TechCrunch the feature was designed to encourage more low-stakes 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 labor.

This is not the first time a text-first social network has tried ephemeral posts. Before it was X, Twitter experimented with this form of sharing back in 2020 with Fleets, which appeared as disappearing Stories. However, the company pulled the feature the following year, citing a lack of adoption.

Meta, meanwhile, believes there’s still potential in disappearing content — something that has worked well for Stories on Instagram and Facebook, for instance. On Threads, the company says it expects people will be encouraged to share more of their unfiltered thoughts, engage in live threading, or try other sorts of experimental content via ghost posts.

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