In September 2020, Facebook announced some new features to its Messenger platform to allow its users to have more functionality. Every improvement or new feature usually comes after some research and testing with smaller audiences so the people at Facebook felt confident that a feature in a competitor's service would be beneficial on theirs as well. And that's when the vanish mode was offered in Facebook Messenger.

Similar to Snapchat's feature, vanish mode allows the sender of a message to set their note to vanish, or disappear after a certain amount of time. This was one of the top features in Snapchat which made it popular among people who were dating — and teenagers — who would send fast messages that couldn't be read after they disappeared.

Facebook unveiled the new feature in Messenger, and it was also available on Instagram, another app owned by Facebook. Facebook's version of vanish mode allows the person who is sending the message to choose exactly how long they want the message to be viewable for by setting a timer which allows them to have a private and secret conversation with someone else. 

Once the timer has expired, there's no way for the recipient to view the message again.