Meta Launches Disappearing ‘Ghost Posts’ on Threads

Meta’s microblogging platform Threads is introducing “ghost posts” that disappear after 24 hours. Just like ephemeral stories on Snapchat or Instagram, ghost posts are designed to encourage users to share their thoughts more spontaneously without the pressure of reaching a certain quality bar.

“Here today and gone tomorrow, you can feel confident trying new things and posting spontaneous thoughts. Replies to ghost posts are sent to your messaging inbox, and only you can see who liked and replied,” Meta explained yesterday.

To create a ghost post, Threads users will need to tap on the new ghost icon when creating a post. These posts appear surrounded by a dotted circle with a countdown indicating when the post will disappear. Only people Threads users follow can reply to ghost posts, and these messages will go straight to their messaging inbox.

Threads started testing ephemeral posts with a limited number of users a year ago. More recently, the platform introduced text attachments, which allow users to attach up to 10,000 characters of text to a Threads post. Regular text posts on Threads are currently limited to 500 characters, which is more than the 280-character limit on Twitter/X. X Premium users, however, can write longer posts with up to 25,000 characters.