Last Updated on December 14, 2020

If you have found the two Messenger feature confusing, then we have share the differences between Message requests vs Ignore message in this guide.

What’s Message requests

Message requests is a Messenger feature that tells one when someone they are not friends with on Facebook has sent them message. You have an option to either Reply or Ignore. 

Messages on Message requests are automatically intercepted by Messenger when someone that is not on your friend list sends a message to you.

Instead of messages from people that are not your Facebook friends to start appearing on your inbox, they will be held for your own moderation to either accept them or ignore them.

What’s Ignore Message

Ignore Message is also a Messenger feature that moves messages into Message requests. We can say that ignore message is a subset of message requests.

The differences between Message Requests and Ignored Message

Differences with Message Requests

1. Messages on Message requests are automatically intercepted by Messenger when someone that is not on your friend list sends a message to you.
2. When someone you’re not friends with on Facebook sends you a message, you have an option to either Accept or Ignore.
3. Ignoring a message request will permanently delete the requests from your message requests lists. Learn how to recover deleted message requests.
4. Message requests could come either from a Facebook profile or Messenger contact
5. Message request is a parent directory for both filtered messages and ignored messages as email Spam folder is to Spam mails.

Differences with Ignored Message

1. Ignored message are manually done by a Messenger user. One can decide to ignore someone they have been chatting with for a long time or otherwise.
2. Ignoring a message will move the message to Message request list. The person sending the message will not know that their messages has been ignored.
3. Ignored messages will no longer be marked as delivered to the sender. You can still see the messages in the ignored list.
4. You can move back ignored messages to Messenger inbox unlike in the message request. See how to cancel ignored messages
5. Ignored messages are always from one’s Messenger contact

So what’s their similarity?

The similarity between Message requests and Ignored messages is that they help to control privacy over what happens on Messenger.