There is a way to mimic WhatsApp’s status feature quite well with DC.
To do this, one first have to create a broadcast list and select the recipients.
After that, disappearing messages must be set to 24 hours
A cloud service is also required. That shouldn’t be a problem as many email accounts have one.
Usually these services allow creating a temporary link for files in the cloud.
So one create such a link for selected images in the cloud and send it via broadcast list.
Recipients can now see the 24 hour link in their chat history.
By clicking on it, the images will be displayed in the browser.
In my experience, the timer only affects messages sent via broadcast list and not normal messages sent to people on the list.
With GMX it looks like this:
Some services also allow slide shows:
A while ago I wanted to propose a custom message type for it.
These link mails from all DC contacts would then be displayed in a separate list and not in the normal chat history and would disappear after 24 hours, similar to WhatsApp.
However, I feared that this would be too cumbersome for broadcasters since the links would have to be created outside of DC. I also had security concerns because many would probably click on the links without hesitation.