PLease no. If someone compromises one of the contacts in a large chat group's google password or whatnot, they now have the entire message and media history from me to the chat group? This is exactly why iMessage is so useless for security - one compromise on one person's apple ID and all their groups have all their messages compromised going forward.

Disappearing messages are what you want here.

I expect it would be easier to compromise a group member's phone than someone's Google account.

That works the same for signal as well, if a person's phone is compromised they have all their chat. What are you talking about? Even signal folks repeatedly have iterated they don't protect messages when a device is compromised.

I have backups enabled actually. Sure, it's a pain to manage compared to WhatsApp, as you have to manually download it off your phone, but Signal has an option for automatic daily backups.

They are encrypted with a key you have to note down somewhere though, so if you don't prepare for it the messages are, in fact, gone forever.

Manual backups are no backup.

I've restored Signal backups before. It was trivial and fast.

Your backups are useless if you want to use a different platform they support. You have to use android or iphone for life. And you can't use them on desktop without a mobile app and you can't have multiple sessions and you have to use your phone number. Right... very private.