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Comment by djhworld | Hacker News Reader

this is just for messages directed at people personally.

I don't see it as being that much different to read receipts or any other form of messaging software

Except you can block read receipts in most sane mail clients (Thunderbird has options for always/prompt/never for example). It doesn't appear that there is a way to block your messages being marked as 'seen' on Facebook, unless it's buried deep in the frequently-changing privacy settings.

The difference is you can't turn it off.

People have different expectations when using this software. I think I've logged on once in the past 6 months. A heavy user who sends me a message and expects, but does not see, a read receipt may think I'm deliberately giving them the cold shoulder.

I want the freedom to not respond or read in privacy. Let them think it was spam filtered or lost in the shuffle.

Yet another reason Facebook is not for me.

Sounds like quite the opposite. If I sent you a message, and saw there was no read receipt, I'll assume you haven't logged in. Without it, I assume you read it and didn't reply...

Like I said, people have different expectations. You can also see when people are logged into Facebook because they are available to chat with. How would you react if they were logged in but you didn't have a read receipt? Or there was a receipt but they didn't respond?

Anyhow, this is all just proving the point. Read receipts introduce a piece of "evidence" that is bound to be misinterpreted. So I don't like them and they're yet another feature hostile to some customers in Facebook.

In the example image it's a message that has been sent to a group.

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