Ephemeral posts on social networks are a useful feature for users who often delete their posts through third-party tools or for posts with short-lived relevance. Threads recently announced that they are testing posts that disappear within 24 hours with a limited number of users on their platform, after initially testing it as an internal prototype.
While there has been no official statement from the company, a spokesperson mentioned that this feature offers a new and casual way to share on Threads. It has not been disclosed whether this experiment is specific to certain regions or who has the ability to activate these ephemeral posts.
App reverse engineer Alessandro Paluzzi shared a post demonstrating the ephemeral feature, where a countdown timer shows how long until the post is deleted. Threads also displays a banner indicating that the post, along with any replies, will disappear when the time expires. Interestingly, quoted replies also have a timer and will vanish once the original post’s time runs out.
In a tweet back in June, Paluzzi initially shared about Threads working on disappearing posts, highlighting a 24-hour button next to the Post button for publishing ephemeral content. Technologist Christ Messina also discovered clues about this feature in the iOS app’s code. He noted that these posts would not be shared with the fediverse as Threads cannot delete them from other ActivityPub-powered servers. Threads began allowing users to share posts with the fediverse in June.
Posts with a 24-hour expiration could be beneficial for creators wanting to share content outside their usual brand, or for commenting on live events that become irrelevant after they end.
Unlike Twitter’s Fleets, which was discontinued due to low usage, Threads may become one of the few social networks offering ephemeral posts alongside platforms like X, Bluesky, and Mastodon.
