Disappearing / self-destructing / ephemeral messages, what can and cannot they do?

[Mikaela]

This subject comes up everywhere at times, including the team room and #50, likely other places also, and there tend to be two views:

View 1: I personally wish ephemeral messages were more easily available in many protocols including Matrix where I have the experience of server containing my details being seized previously and I have trusted contacts who don't care about the logs being stored. Trusted contacts are also often the usecase of journalists or Signal. Additionally should my device get seized, I would not have the chat logs I have configured my device to remove, so should trust be misplaced on the other party, "fool me once, shame on me". I tend to recommend this writeup: https://github.com/vector-im/element-web/issues/2497

View 2: Ephemeral messages aren't magic, there is no way to prevent someone from photographing their screen (extreme less-technical option) or modifying the software to not obey removals (either the manufacturer or someone just taking the FOSS) and thus any kind of data-hygiene or automated message removal is useless or even harmful).

Both views contain parts of truth and thus I think there could be an idea in writing on the subject in detail somewhere, whether it be a longer guide somewhere like the blog or a section somewhere on PrivacyGuides.org.

[dngray]

I do agree, this is definitely a good discussion for a blog post. It's also worth mentioning with Element you can now export conversations, to HTML/JSON/TXT formats, and then the element client can't "delete" it off your hard drive...

I really think ephemeral messages were always a gimmick, added by some other centralized platforms (notably popularized with snapchat). How did those IRC and email users ever survive without this feature?!

Matrix does have the ability to remove/redact messages but they should really only be used in two scenarios:

• where you made an accidental mistake
• for moderators to remove content they don't want people to see

They were never really designed for privacy, and in fact I recall in the Keybase room we used to have, people used to use time limited messages on crazy short time frames. What this resulted in was only seeing one side of a conversation "because privacy", except it was a public room so there wasn't any expectation of privacy.

[freddy-m]

this is definitely a good discussion for a blog post

I think the forum is a more appropriate medium, really. Up to you...

[TommyTran732]

It should be viewed as a convenience feature. It auto deletes messages for you so you don't have to do it. It is not a privacy or security feature - you have to have complete trust in your contact anyways.