4 ms·

Can someone explain to me what use case I'm missing? Why do people care about old messages? Personally I just read incoming message and never "scroll back".

chupchap 6y ago
Messages are not always transactional right? They can also be emotional and heartfelt. Some people like to revist such messages.
- Y-bar 6y ago
  This is me. It's like the old shoe-box of postcards which is in the attic a year or two at a time. I still keep an old device with messages from someone whom I will never meet again. It is emotional and I sometimes reminisce by charging the device and scroll through the messages.
WhyNotHugo 6y ago
Generally, it's attachment, or emotionality (sorry to sound so robotic, I'm not disproving, merely describing reality). Many also keep information around in chat messages, knowing "it's there", and don't copy it elsewhere.
jan_Inkepa 6y ago
My memory's not great, and it's good to be able to double-check if I've talked about something with someone before, or to find old links/information shared ("damnit, what was her niece called again? I'll sound like an idiot asking her for the third time"). Or stuff like "remember when you told me X?" - just to have evidence to clear things up, or to be able to refer to conversations in the distant past from time to time.
infinityplus1 6y ago
Messages are like email. I never delete them. Situations arrive where I have to go look into past messages to see what conversations I had around several dates.
pagade 6y ago
Mainly disposophobia.
tomatocracy 6y ago
Some messages include information I need to go back and refer to. eg a recent example for me was a relative sent me dimensions for a piece of furniture they were getting rid of and offered to me so I needed to check if it fit in the space I was thinking of. I couldn't check when they sent me the message so I needed to go back and check later.
framecowbird 6y ago
I’m with you. I can’t remember the time I last looked back more than a couple days.
- Jweb_Guru 6y ago
  But many of us have usecases for looking back at conversations from months ago, so just telling people "you don't need it" isn't likely to get you very far.
mikro2nd 6y ago
Personally I read messages, keep them only long enough to take action (when that's necessary) and then delete them. I don't want my brain cluttered by dozens/hundreds/thousands of ancient, no-longer-relevant messages. Furthermore, when the blackshirts come to get you, it's your own old messages they'll use to hang you. Get rid of them, I say.
dspillett 6y ago
> Why do people care about old messages? Example from recent days: "what was [friend]'s postal address again, I didn't copy it over to contacts, search for address, there it is".
Lopiolis 6y ago
Does it matter? People care. People don't want to lose years worth of chat histories with friends, family and their significant other(s). That's just how it is. I'm not sure why it's so hotly debated around here. People want to preserve their chats and their media. There's sentimental/emotional value to these things and they don't want to lose these things. That's all that should matter. I feel like these discussions always get bogged down in "but why", particularly from people who have a different opinion, when it's irrelevant. People value things differently. Just because their values are different from yours doesn't make them any less justified than you. This is reality. This is people. If Signal wants to provide a mainstream secure and private alternative to WhatsApp, then it needs to make concessions to accommodate these preferences. If they don't want to, that's fine, but it also means I can't recommend Signal to non-tech friends/family.
- jsiepkes 6y ago
  It matters because people don't always realize that it means making trade-off's. And people often don't know what the consequences can be of those trade-offs because they didn't realise it was a trade-off to begin with. In case of whatsapp and keeping chat history it can mean years of chat history becoming public if for example your Apple / Google account (where whatsapp automatically stores your conversation backups) gets hacked. Do you think the people on Parler would have used the DM function if they had realised all those DM's could become public one day? Of course not. But they simply didn't realize that the "handy" DM function meant those messages were stored somewhere and that in turns means it can all get public one day.
  - rocqua 6y ago
    > In case of whatsapp and keeping chat history it can mean years of chat history becoming public if for example your Apple / Google account (where whatsapp automatically stores your conversation backups) gets hacked. IIRC the backups aren't stored in plaintext. They are encrypted with a key known to the device and whatsapp. The key is restored to a new device by whatsapp after SMS authentication. Hence only a Google Drive compromise will not lead to full chat history compromise. That also requires something like a Sim Swap attack.
rdwallis 6y ago
I used my whatsapp chat history to successfully contest a traffic fine. My parents wanted me to check on their house while they were away. I messaged them on whatsapp when I left my house and then again when I arrived at theirs. A month or so after my trip I was sent a fine for not displaying my car license while my car was parked on a public road. I had driven down the road where the fine was recorded during the trip. Using the timestamps of the whatsapp messages I was able to show that there was not enough time during my trip for me to have stopped to park.
- vinay427 6y ago
  > A month or so after my trip I was sent a fine for not displaying my car license while my car was parked on a public road. I had driven down the road where the fine was recorded during the trip. More of an aside, but what sort of car license must be displayed for parking but not for driving down the same road? Is it some sort of parking permit or disc?
  - rdwallis 6y ago
    A car license is required when driving or parked but the fine was issued to a parked car without a driver in it. I proved that I was driving the car when the ticket was issued so the claims made by the metro officer about how they issued the ticket were not true. My car was licensed at the time and the license was displayed correctly. I was not guilty of the offense and the whatsapp messages allowed me to prove that the officer who issued the ticket was lying.
hiq 6y ago
It's nice to store any information that's nice to have, but not important enough to expressly record somewhere. "search, don't sort" applies especially well to this kind of info. Addresses were already mentioned, but that also applies to IBAN, email addresses, door codes, restaurants... It's also some kind of light diary: you can easily deduce what you were doing on a certain day if you look at the corresponding message. For me it's not important enough that I would want to migrate it to another app if I were switching (I'd just save the DB), but it's not completely useless either. And of course some people just store everything there, including things that were not messages in the first, just like they do with email. You can argue that they shouldn't, but if that's what they want... Obviously that's also a privacy risk, e.g. in case you lose your phone. There are many countries where I wouldn't keep my chat history for more than one week.
userbinator 6y ago
There's something called history, a lot of people like that... More philosophically, the fact that such a doubt even exists is a little disturbing sign of society today.

chupchap 6y ago

Messages are not always transactional right? They can also be emotional and heartfelt. Some people like to revist such messages.

Y-bar 6y ago
This is me. It's like the old shoe-box of postcards which is in the attic a year or two at a time. I still keep an old device with messages from someone whom I will never meet again. It is emotional and I sometimes reminisce by charging the device and scroll through the messages.

WhyNotHugo 6y ago

Generally, it's attachment, or emotionality (sorry to sound so robotic, I'm not disproving, merely describing reality). Many also keep information around in chat messages, knowing "it's there", and don't copy it elsewhere.

jan_Inkepa 6y ago

My memory's not great, and it's good to be able to double-check if I've talked about something with someone before, or to find old links/information shared ("damnit, what was her niece called again? I'll sound like an idiot asking her for the third time"). Or stuff like "remember when you told me X?" - just to have evidence to clear things up, or to be able to refer to conversations in the distant past from time to time.

infinityplus1 6y ago

Messages are like email. I never delete them. Situations arrive where I have to go look into past messages to see what conversations I had around several dates.

pagade 6y ago

Mainly disposophobia.

tomatocracy 6y ago

Some messages include information I need to go back and refer to. eg a recent example for me was a relative sent me dimensions for a piece of furniture they were getting rid of and offered to me so I needed to check if it fit in the space I was thinking of. I couldn't check when they sent me the message so I needed to go back and check later.

framecowbird 6y ago

I’m with you. I can’t remember the time I last looked back more than a couple days.

Jweb_Guru 6y ago
But many of us have usecases for looking back at conversations from months ago, so just telling people "you don't need it" isn't likely to get you very far.

mikro2nd 6y ago

Personally I read messages, keep them only long enough to take action (when that's necessary) and then delete them. I don't want my brain cluttered by dozens/hundreds/thousands of ancient, no-longer-relevant messages. Furthermore, when the blackshirts come to get you, it's your own old messages they'll use to hang you. Get rid of them, I say.

dspillett 6y ago

> Why do people care about old messages? Example from recent days: "what was [friend]'s postal address again, I didn't copy it over to contacts, search for address, there it is".

Lopiolis 6y ago

Does it matter? People care. People don't want to lose years worth of chat histories with friends, family and their significant other(s). That's just how it is. I'm not sure why it's so hotly debated around here. People want to preserve their chats and their media. There's sentimental/emotional value to these things and they don't want to lose these things. That's all that should matter. I feel like these discussions always get bogged down in "but why", particularly from people who have a different opinion, when it's irrelevant. People value things differently. Just because their values are different from yours doesn't make them any less justified than you. This is reality. This is people. If Signal wants to provide a mainstream secure and private alternative to WhatsApp, then it needs to make concessions to accommodate these preferences. If they don't want to, that's fine, but it also means I can't recommend Signal to non-tech friends/family.

jsiepkes 6y ago
It matters because people don't always realize that it means making trade-off's. And people often don't know what the consequences can be of those trade-offs because they didn't realise it was a trade-off to begin with. In case of whatsapp and keeping chat history it can mean years of chat history becoming public if for example your Apple / Google account (where whatsapp automatically stores your conversation backups) gets hacked. Do you think the people on Parler would have used the DM function if they had realised all those DM's could become public one day? Of course not. But they simply didn't realize that the "handy" DM function meant those messages were stored somewhere and that in turns means it can all get public one day.
- rocqua 6y ago
  > In case of whatsapp and keeping chat history it can mean years of chat history becoming public if for example your Apple / Google account (where whatsapp automatically stores your conversation backups) gets hacked. IIRC the backups aren't stored in plaintext. They are encrypted with a key known to the device and whatsapp. The key is restored to a new device by whatsapp after SMS authentication. Hence only a Google Drive compromise will not lead to full chat history compromise. That also requires something like a Sim Swap attack.

rdwallis 6y ago

I used my whatsapp chat history to successfully contest a traffic fine. My parents wanted me to check on their house while they were away. I messaged them on whatsapp when I left my house and then again when I arrived at theirs. A month or so after my trip I was sent a fine for not displaying my car license while my car was parked on a public road. I had driven down the road where the fine was recorded during the trip. Using the timestamps of the whatsapp messages I was able to show that there was not enough time during my trip for me to have stopped to park.

vinay427 6y ago
> A month or so after my trip I was sent a fine for not displaying my car license while my car was parked on a public road. I had driven down the road where the fine was recorded during the trip. More of an aside, but what sort of car license must be displayed for parking but not for driving down the same road? Is it some sort of parking permit or disc?
- rdwallis 6y ago
  A car license is required when driving or parked but the fine was issued to a parked car without a driver in it. I proved that I was driving the car when the ticket was issued so the claims made by the metro officer about how they issued the ticket were not true. My car was licensed at the time and the license was displayed correctly. I was not guilty of the offense and the whatsapp messages allowed me to prove that the officer who issued the ticket was lying.

hiq 6y ago

It's nice to store any information that's nice to have, but not important enough to expressly record somewhere. "search, don't sort" applies especially well to this kind of info. Addresses were already mentioned, but that also applies to IBAN, email addresses, door codes, restaurants... It's also some kind of light diary: you can easily deduce what you were doing on a certain day if you look at the corresponding message. For me it's not important enough that I would want to migrate it to another app if I were switching (I'd just save the DB), but it's not completely useless either. And of course some people just store everything there, including things that were not messages in the first, just like they do with email. You can argue that they shouldn't, but if that's what they want... Obviously that's also a privacy risk, e.g. in case you lose your phone. There are many countries where I wouldn't keep my chat history for more than one week.

userbinator 6y ago

There's something called history, a lot of people like that... More philosophically, the fact that such a doubt even exists is a little disturbing sign of society today.