I'm not sure about the delete other peoples messages, and have that deletion propagated, but having the possibility of deciding over own messages it's basic and desirable, in my opinion.

I've just used such a feature less than 2 hours ago, in Whatsapp. Published a secret in the wrong group, by mistake. That's the whole point of allowing editions or deletions of one's own contents: humans are fallible, and shit happens.

>I've just used such a feature less than 2 hours ago, in Whatsapp. Published a secret in the wrong group, by mistake.

By this time, it's too late, anybody could have seen it, copied it, etc.

Deleting it after the fact is security theater.

The "secret" (a link to another private whatsapp group to which not everybody should enter, just for easiness of organizational purposes in an event, so not much of a critical secret) was reportedly seen by around 5 people out of 200 in the group. No one of them bothered, if they did it would mean just a bit of explanation and taking them out of the new group. By all means, being able to quickly make a correction was not too late and was not security theater. Your position is that of "if we cannot solve 100% of a problem, there is no use to solving 95%" which is clearly a false dichotomy. There is value on editing or deleting messages after the fact of sending them.

Case in point, I just edited this message to change all "_" to "*" to make italics work. That's another use: fixing wrong assumptions about usage of technology itself.

>Your position is that of _if we cannot solve 100% of a problem, there is no use to solving 95%_ which is clearly a false dichotomy.

No, my position is that if 5% of a problem (5 out of 100 people seeing it) is equally catastrophic as 100%, then it makes no sense to differentiate, which is a very true dichotomy.

The fact that just 1 person that's not supposed to see it seeing it can do damage, makes the problem a binary and not a spectrum.

I agree for catastrophic mistakes. It doesn't mean the feature is rendered useless for the non catastrophic ones.

Which one occurs more often than the other, that's another question, but I'd argue that the later is more common, and there is no doubt that people knew, in the event they wrote a very catastrophic secret, the limitations of the edition/deletion of messages (as long as most people nowadays seem to know about screenshots being a thing)

The issue is that zapzupnz deletions to propagate. This can only be ensured in locked-down systems.

There's a difference between offering corrections and retractions that others may or may not accept and actually enforcing deletions. This is both socially and information-theoretically true.

All I said is that the deletions should be propagated. The presentation of this can only be ensured in locked-down systems, but the actual propagation is simple enough. Just as the server can send all users within a channel "so-and-so said this message", it can say "so-and-so deleted this message" — it can be left up to the client whether to actually remove it or perhaps just hide it, ready to be shown again with a click.

Obviously on Discord, one is tied to the official client's behaviour since the ToS discourages third party clients. However, for Slack, Mattermost, Matrix etc. clients, the possibilities widen up.

Ah, I read "deletion" as the actual effect, not the request for the action to be performed.

So this is not a secret anymore. The only reasonable solution for such a mistake is to revoke the exposed token. If it is not easy to do then it is negligence of WhatsApp UX team. Your "let's pretend you didn't receive this" deletion message may have failed to propagate to some or all of the recipients, including that one guy that likes to mess things up

Also with WhatsApp going through my notification demon on my desktop the secret would not actually be deleted ever.

(Same for tweets etc.)

That secret is still out there, it should be modified.

This is a false sense of security.

Is it DRM when a moderator deletes a post on a phpBB forum? Or does it only count when it's on Slack?

If a complete copy of all messages sent were on your computer and the administrator had the ability to delete this data from your computer whenever they want, I consider that to be an infringement on the control I expect of my own computer. On the other hand, the contents a phpBB forum (or even HN) are stored on someone else’s computer and no one has the ability to arbitrarily delete stuff that I’ve downloaded.

> an infringement on the control I expect of my own computer

How is it an infringement? The server saying 'so-and-so sent a message, here it is' is exactly no different to the server saying 'so-and-so deleted their message, get rid of it'.

You can always take logs

> On the other hand, the contents of a phpBB forum (or even HN) are stored on someone else's computer and nobody has the ability to arbitrarily delete stuff that I've downloaded

Yet, when you consult that forum, you're in the exact same position as you would be with Discord after someone has deleted a message — you cannot consult that content anymore unless you've explicitly backed it up (in the case of Discord, made your own log; in the case of a forum, downloaded or archived the relevant site elements).