Users are discovering hundreds of ‘filtered’ messages buried behind a series of menus that they didn’t know existed.
The inbox, accessible on the web or Facebook Messenger apps for smartphones and tablets, is part of Facebook’s filtering system, designed to catch spam and other unwanted messages.
However, users, including myself, have discovered their “filtered” inbox full of legitimate messages that never made it to the main inbox or Messenger app.
The simplest way to access the inbox is to navigate to facebook.com/messages/other on the desktop. If you struggle with this method, then try clicking on your message tab at the top of the page...at the top of that on the left you have recent, then next to that is a tab which is grey so not as obvious called message requests. If you click on that, at the bottom there's another tab called see filtered requests. Click on that and you're there - hopefully!
Within the Messenger app the hidden inbox is buried under four menus. To get to it tap Settings, then People, then Message Requests and tap on the “See filtered requests” link.
The filtered messages include anything attempting to send you messages that you have manually filtered out as unwanted, as well as messages from people who are not connected with you on Facebook. I discovered hundred's of messages dating back years.
Most of the time you can safely ignore it - Facebook built the system to stop messages you want to see being sent to spam – but it can also trap messages such as those informing you of a friend’s death or a story tip that ends up in filtered and hidden from your Facebook-obsessed eyes.
