Messenger launches shortcuts to send silent messages, money and @mentions

Basically, these are tricks on Messenger to let you enter commands by simply typing text, much like on Telegram or Slack, if you're familiar with it. Only two commands are available at the moment: "@everyone" and "/silent."

The @everyone command allows you, in a group chat, to call out to all participants by tagging them all at once. A way to shout "Hey ho, shut up, I have something to say!" but in a disruptive way, as any young technocentric and dynamic in this web 3.0 must do.

The /silent command doesn't allow you to mute a participant in a discussion, but to send "discreet". Basically, when you enter this command, your message will be sent to your recipient without being accompanied by a notification, so as not to disturb people.

The goal, according to Meta, is to allow you to share your genius ideas or your delirious lyrical flights of fancy fueled by several hours of insomnia to whomever you please without waking them up at 4AM with a notification. Actually, I find the concept of not disturbing someone with a message that I myself consider unimportant quite healthy.

More shortcuts planned, including one for /pay

Meta has announced that more shortcuts will arrive in the coming weeks and months, first in the US and on iOS. Thus, users should be able to make payments with the command "/pay." This would only concern payments from individual to individual and transactions would be free of charge.

There will also be a shortcut "/gif" to search for GIFs more easily or another to send emoticons like /shrug ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ or /tableflip (╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻, in short, memes from 2009 at the time of Rage Comics (who remembers I troll you?) that are so relevant in 2022 and that I personally look forward to spamming to my two contacts who still use Messenger.

I personally have not been able to test these new shortcuts because I am on Android. My sister, who is a zoomer, did not have the new shortcuts on her Messenger app. If you have an iPhone, feel free to tell me what you think about these shortcuts if you have them.

For my part, I'm not against giving users more control over their messaging applications. In fact, I find that adding commands deepens the user experience (in addition to making me feel like a hacker who has mastered the code).

What shortcut would you like to have on your messaging application? For me, it would be an /automatic reply with a coupon for not going out or an @friends to finally find some (/insertsademoji).

Source: Meta