Remove obsolette disappearing message notices

[peppa]

Currently the notices in your chat which say “you set the disappearing message timer…” stay in your chat permanently unless you manually delete them. If you change the disappearing message timer often, these notices clutter up your chat. And in the worst case, they can provide unwanted insight into your chat behavior if your device is seized or inspected.

As @missytake says in this related feature proposal:

@missytake

This is suspicious to any police officer who seizes the device; they can now see that something sensitive was communicated, that there is something to hide.

Therefore to keep your chat uncluttered and to reduce unnecessary risks, these notices should be automatically deleted as soon as they become obsolette.

You can use a simple algorithm to determine if the notice for a disappearing message timer is relevent or obsolette:

1. The last “timer changed” notice (relating to the timer which is currently used) is always relevent.

2. If there are any existing (non-expired) messages sent after a “timer changed” notice and before the next “timer changed” notice, that notice is still relevent.

3. Otherwise the “timer changed” notice is obsolette and can be deleted automatically.

This is probably not the most urgent issue for DC but I also expect its reletively easy to implement.

Expected behavior

The notices in your chat history which say when the disappearing message timer changed are deleted once they are no longer relevent.

Actual behavior

The notices which say when the disappearing message timer changed stay permanently in your chat history unless you manually delete them.

[adbenitez]

notice that you can also manually remove the system message if you think you need to (ex. to avoid the “enemy” to know when did you enable disappearing messages) but you better remove the chat or completely uninstall the app with some panic button app, I guess a system message about disappearing messages enable/disable is the least of the problems

[SamanaJohann]

@missytake

This is suspicious to any police officer who seizes the device

@adbenitez

you need to (ex. to avoid the “enemy” to know when did you enable disappearing messages) but you better remove the chat or completely uninstall the app with some panic button app

Just to be aware, like effects of deeds, support and approve of unskilful has the same effects as doing oneself… More and more my person needs to question any integrity and moral here…

@adbenitez

…the least of the problems

In deed

[peppa]

Thanks, I eventually realized you can manually remove the system messages but this was not obvious at first, and because they look different to normal messages many users might not know that they can do this. (Also its not clear if you remove the system message only for yourself, or for all participants in the chat.)

I still think its better to have the process automated by DC as there is no need to keep these obsolette system messages which only clutter up the interface, and automatic removal is also better opsec by default.

But your right that there are other more critical things that a person must think about when in a high risk situation.

[Simon]

It could be faster to just clear the whole chat in some cases.