Exactly this. But I wish Signal allowed us more time. They give us a custom option but it is extremely limited. Seconds, minutes, and hours are what one would expect. Days you can only set up to 6. Weeks you can select {1,2,3,4}. I don't see a reason these can't be arbitrary numbers. 3 months, 6 months, and a year are also another obvious points at which people want to delete. But why not just arbitrary? If it isn't any different, than just let users decide.

It is also still missing a key point we've been asking for for awhile, message archival. That's the big thing keeping me from using disappearing messages, because I don't want to take a screenshot anytime anything important is said. That's a terrible way to search for messages. With an arbitrary delete function (only limit I see is Signal's servers don't accept delete commands after 24hrs) you can have consent from the other party about archiving messages while disappearing messages is on. This provides a tremendous amount of utility.

I used to defend Signal a lot here. But with a lot of decisions they've made in the last year they seem to be just another company that "knows better" than the user. We don't need another tech company that's disconnected from users and makes changes just to make them[0]. (Beyond that, Signal isn't large enough to make people stick around when dumb decisions are made) I think this is a fine stance to take when it comes to the security portion --there are fairly objective "best practices" here-- but not for UI/UX and privacy functions. But with the latter there's a lot of subjective preferences and needs by different people and groups. Signal, you do not need to be and look like WhatsApp. Just be Signal. The progress has been very slow, new features come with footguns, and there is a lack of communication. They only seem to take communication from their community forums which has an extreme echo chamber and is the textbook example of "we know better than you" mentality. It's very frustrating and it's caused me to stop recommending Signal to people (my friends did the same for similar reasons). I just will not understand why when given the chance to continue to grow Signal decided to shoot themselves in the foot.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28109842

> Signal isn't large enough to make people stick around when dumb decisions are made)

Boy does this hit close to home, whenever I think of Firefox and its accelerating decline.

> The default, if I'm reading the article correctly, is to not disappear messages. What's new is the ability to disappear messages by default for all conversations, instead of having to remember to set it for each conversation.

Yeah, that's my read too.

The article's title is confusing and should be changed. I was worried they were going to change the defaults on me, and I was going to have to rush in and reset things.

That's even better, and certainly I agree that's a very valid use-case. Whatever the new feature is, I'm fine with it --- it's the presentation of it that saddens me.

> The default, if I'm reading the article correctly, is to not disappear messages.

But that is exactly what the default should be and what's needed to thwart large-scale blanket surveillance of the whole population.

If the mere fact that ephemeral messages are enabled raises a flag, that kind of defeats (part of) the purpose.

Defaults are set on your phone I think, so unless your phone is compromised (in which case the default setting for disappearing messages really isn't the thing you should be worrying about), it doesn't really provide a signal in large-scale blanket surveillance.

If every phone (or most phones) collect all messages, because it's the default, only either phone of the conversing parties needs to be eventually compromised to leak the entire conversation, even years later.

Sure, and if everybody uses WhatsApp and stores all messages on their phones, the entire conversation can eventually be leaked as well. If you don't want conversations to be stored, you can choose not to store them just like you can choose to use Signal. I don't see the problem here.

Your peer will likely still store the conversation if it is opt-out

If you turn on disappearing messages, their Signal client will delete the messages unless they turn it off again. And of course they'll always be able to take a screenshot of your message before it disappears - it does not work if your conversation partner is your adversary. But if you care about messages disappearing and your partner doesn't mind, you can set them to disappear and they will disappear from both your devices.

> Defaults are set on your phone I think

Yes, the messages are only on your phone; Signal doesn't have them.

I don't reckon Signal disappearing messages have much to do with "large-scale blanket surveillance of the whole population". This seems more about reducing potentially incriminating evidence in the absence of blanket surveillance.

The problem is that all personal data is potentially incriminating and harmful if not tightly controlled. I am not thinking about actually people/governments trying to do bad. It is a matter of chance and false positives, that plainly increase with the amount of data. There is cases when it is totally legitimate for law enforcement to seize all communication. It happened to me once and it does not feel good if all your communication is seized and searched. You give away personal information of so many individuals. Actually one should in those cases inform everyone about such information 'leak'. Alternatively having a red button that deletes/hides all your data, would also not look all to wise and it will put further stress on you in such a situation, in which you know that most probably everything will turn out well for you. Even if not giving away third party information would be the ethically thing to do , you will not likely do so even if the claims against you are not justifiable. So better delete your conversations and reduce your footprint. This is also good for email. Everyone should just do what we expect from companies...

I've switched most of my group chats with friends to autodelete.

While I haven't had my devices seized, two acquaintances had their device seized for an investigation. They were just on the wrong place at the wrong time.

This meant that months and months of our chats were potentially read by a third party.