Keep Calm and Scroll Up: Media Files on Facebook Messenger are Still There

Panicked messages from Facebook Messenger users were all over social media on Thursday (May 4) after reports started going around that the social media giant deleted people’s photos, files, and links and other media in their chats on the ubiquitous messaging app.

Mobile users, in particular were quick to notice that their precious media files were no longer there when they clicked on the Media, files and links folder in the app. 

Some Facebook users, however, reported that the files were still there when they checked on desktop devices. 

That didn’t stop “Facebook Messenger” though from trending on Twitter earlier in the day. 

But keen-eyed users noticed that the photos, videos, links, and other media files could actually still be accessed when they scrolled up the chat groups.

That’s no problem when you’re looking for a photo or video that was recently sent, but it’s a bit tedious when you manually have to sift through dozens, hundreds or even thousands of messages to get to the specific file you want. This is especially excruciating when you’re part of a very active chat group with nonstop messages coming in all day.

But, that’s better than having no files at all.

Many people use Facebook Messenger to send and exchange photos, videos, and other files to each other. According to a recent study, there are over 85 million Messenger users in the Philippines, or roughly 74 percent of the entire population, as of January 2022. About 53.3 percent are women, and the largest users were those in the 18-to-24 age bracket.

Esquire Philippines has reached out to the local office of Facebook and will update this story when we receive a response.