this post was submitted on 05 Jun 2025
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Privacy
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All of my signal conversations have auto expiry
Do people really use their conversation logs for things? Are you often searching your conversational logs?
Outside of corporate compliance issues I can't imagine the workflow for most people
Yes, and yes.
"I said this was happening 3 weeks ago. Here's the literal text of me sending it to you and you saying 'Okay thanks' in reply."
Shuts down an argument real quick.
History search is great when you have a lot of friends and poor memory. Perhaps not your use case ?
I never set auto expiry and often search messages. Sometimes it's because I want to find a specific fact or datum from two years ago; other times it's just for a reminder of a memory. On occasion, if the history wasn't there, people might remember something important differently.
Me and my wife and wife sends information, pictures , whatever. I often search my messages for stuff
Yes and yes
Though the same I like my conversations disappear when I need to reinstall Signal.
Yes, and yes. But most of it's because I've moved all communication over to it.
If I have anything that shouldn't stick around it doesn't stick around, If I need my grocery list from last month it's there though.
That said, I really don't have any interest in backups. It's an ephemeral stream at best that is there when I need it. And there are parts of it disappear when they're no longer needed.
The days where we presumed we could safely bitch about things to our friends over social media are clearly gone and privacy is of ultimate importance.
Pretend it's 1984, and you won't get yourself in trouble.
My grocery list is its own signal group chat with other members of the household
Same, We do more than groceries though, It's kind of fun anybody that needs anything just pops it in there
out of curiosity: what duration do you have?
My default is set to 1 week.
Enough for conversational context
Most Whatsapp users (my parents) want to keep logs of everything, its become normalised.
You are right, I don't really search my messages that much. Most important conversion is going by email for most people still.
I have never searched for a message ever.