If you’ve watched enough Mission Impossible (or Inspector Gadget, if your parents wouldn’t let you watch Mission Impossible), you’re familiar with the self-destructing message. Now, Meta’s X competitor, Threads, is making them a core feature.
Called “Ghost posts,” the new type of message launches today, and it lets you post to your timeline without the pressure of leaving a permanent trace. Ghost posts will appear on your timeline while active, but after 24 hours, they’ll automatically be archived.
“Here today and gone tomorrow,” as Threads puts it, the idea is to encourage posters to share “spontaneous thoughts” and “fresh takes.”
It’s not the first time a social media platform has experimented with ephemeral content—Snapchat is probably the most famous example—but it makes sense. People change, and the person I was 10 years ago may not look like who I am today. Even if you don’t have anything cancel-able on your timeline, it can be embarrassing to see old posts. And if you still stand by everything you’ve ever posted, it’s still a good idea to clear your timeline before leaving a platform behind.
That’s why sites like X already have a number of third-party programs that will delete your old posts for you, but Threads is the first platform of its type to offer the feature officially. Here’s how it works:
How to use Ghost Posts on Threads
Credit: Michelle Ehrhardt
Threads’ Ghost posts are already live, so you can try them out right away. The only catch is they don’t yet seem to be available for desktop (at least based on my testing), so you’ll need to use the Threads app to get started, at least for now.
To write a ghost post, open the Threads app and find the “What’s new?” box under your username (it’s usually right up at the top of the page). Hit the icon that looks like a smiley face inside a dotted-line chat bubble to the right of it.
From there, write your post as you normally would. When you send it, it’ll appear in your followers’ feeds in a chat bubble surrounded by dotted-lines, and on your profile in a special Ghost posts subsection.
Aside from being temporary, ghost posts also hide their metrics and replies. Only you will be able to see who’s interacted with your post, and any replies are sent to your messaging inbox, rather than directly below the post. Everyone else will just see smiley faces next to the post’s metrics, indicating that at least one person has interacted with it.
And that’s it. You’ve successfully haunted your friends’ feeds.
What happens to a Ghost Post after 24 hours?
While Ghost Posts are mostly set-it and forget it, you can technically still interact with them after 24 hours. They’ll be archived, which means others won’t be able to see them, but if you ever want to scroll through your old thoughts, it’s easy enough to look at your archived posts. Just go to your profile page, hit the two-lined button in the top right corner, and tap Archive. Also note that while normal archived posts can be made live again, that’s not the case for Ghost posts.
Similarly, to ensure that Ghost posts do not remain live on other servers once they’re archived, they are unable to be shared to the fediverse, Meta told Lifehacker via email.
Update 10/27 at 5:57 PM E.T.: Added clarification from Meta that Ghost posts cannot be shared to the fediverse.
