See, the lack of bidirectional deletion is one of the reasons I prefer Signal. Nobody other than me should have the ability to delete data on my device.
I disagree. I see my phone as an extension of my brain. If I have an in-person conversation, the other party can't force me to forget the conversation, and they shouldn't have that ability for my phone either.
What if only the other partys messages where deleted?
In telegram it is understood that 'secret chats' constitutes confidentiality. As such, both parties, I believe, ought to be able to delete everything.
I kind of see you point about non-secret chats.
But then we are back with a opt-in model for privacy.
Personally: what I tell you at the coffee machine, in confidence or not, is ephemeral. I would probably not talk to you at all if you where taperecording all conversations, as you want to do with messages... so I think both.parties.should be able to delete text conversations. And privacy should be on by default.
> I would probably not talk to you at all if you where taperecording all conversations
You hit the nail on the head with this one. To me deletion is a nice compromise and why the coffee shop analogy isn't a good comparator. Similarly we don't record video calls (and Moxie himself doesn't like this). So why should every text be recorded and parties do not have control over that data? I do feel that each person in the conversation has a right to control that data (if anything the sender more so) and when policy fails it should fail in the direction that has more privacy (which is the message not existing within Signal's log^). But currently people aren't given this choice and there is no consideration of failure modes.
^ Careful wording because if I don't make this added comment people think I'm unaware that screenshots exist.
I don't really make that distinction, I think it's harmful to have E2E as optional, and only use platforms than have either mandatory E2E encryption (Signal, WhatsApp), or no E2E encryption (SMS, email).
If you have an in-person conversation with me in confidence, that doesn't grant you any additional powers to make me forget details of the conversation.
> Personally: what I tell you at the coffee machine, in confidence or not, is ephemeral. I would probably not talk to you at all if you where taperecording all conversations, as you want to do with messages...
What if I have a very good memory, and follow conversations by writing up their details in personal memos that you can't delete? (e.g. Comey's contemporary memos of conversations he had with Trump.)
> so I think both.parties.should be able to delete text conversations. And privacy should be on by default.
The problem for you is that I'm not going to agree to that - if you won't use Signal, I'm going to force a downgrade to SMS or email, and then you get even worse security and privacy.
If you want to have a conversation that can't be recorded in an automated way, you basically need to meet in a sauna.
> If you won't use Signal, I'm going to force a downgrade to SMS or email, and then you get even worse security and privacy.
Or we will set up e2e encrypted telegram. Or not talk.
> What if I have a very good memory, and follow conversations by writing up their details
You saying that you remember I said something, even took a screenshot vs you can prove I said something, is a big difference.
If I am doing a snowden, I might go to a sauna. If I am planning to overthrow my boss, I think e2e telegram is okay. Because I can delete the conversation it might even be preferable to signal.
Sorry, I just can't agree with your take. You're fundamentally trying to use technology to restrict rather than enable use cases, and doing so in ways that aren't actually robust to your use cases and threat models.
