Privacy My Butt

A bit of History

I've joined Telegram on the 14th of September, 2015, because people from a game wanted to chat to me, so I gave Telegram a go. At that point in time, I still had WhatsApp. The more I used Telegram, the more stupid WhatsApp felt. Slowly, I got my friends and family to join Telegram, instead of WhatsApp. Telegram had a better UI, better and more interesting functionalities, stickers, bots...

Talking of bots, by April 2016, I was involved in running @WerewolfBot worldwide, helping support, translation, server management. This meant, amongst other things, dealing with death threats, spam squads sending porn faster than you can delete it, and other types of people you really don't want to know about, and literally tens of thousands of people's wellbeing relying on me and the rest of our small team doing their jobs. I wasn't 18 yet.

Since then, I have directly invited around 35 of my close friends and relatives to join Telegram, and that number keeps increasing when you account for the people I got to join indirectly. This isn't a very large number, but it's big enough that I have broken free from Fb Messenger and Whatsapp. Incentives I give people to join Telegram are always very similar :
1 - I'm on it, and if you wanna talk to me, you need it
2 - The rest of my friends are on it
3 - Your can send as many files (up to 1.5GB each) to anyone, or to yourself for storage
4 - Telegram is committed to protecting your data, keeping it safe and away from snoops

Interestingly, 4 is always the one real people care about the least. You can make any statement, publish any study, I don't think anything can change that (see impact of Cambridge Analytica and subsequent scandals on facebook use), and there is a good reason for it. People simply don't care about their data being misused to do anything about it. This time, things are different.

The pre-update unsend/delete functionalities

On 3rd of January 2017, Telegram released the unsend feature we're all familiar with :
Once you send a PM to someone, you have 48 hours to delete it. This means that sober you on Sunday afternoon can delete that text drunk you sent on Saturday evening. Neat. This also meant that if you mistakenly sent a message to Alice instead of Bob, you could delete it from Alice's conversation altogether, avoiding the ever awkward "Oups, sorry, wrong chat". Telegram had given us a Ctrl Z.

We also had a delete function. You could go anywhere in time in your conversation, and remove messages from you or Alice from it. This means you clear your history, in a way. You didn't have to look at that breakup message, staring right back at you. More private information that you didn't want anybody to see by mistake ever, you could make sure that no one could see these on your account. You could remove things from your sight forever.

There was a loophole though. That nude you sent, or the plethora of embarrassing messages, angry notes, incriminating evidence, Russian nuclear silo codes, all of these would still live on, on someone else's cloud.

What changed

On March 24 2019, Telegram released an update : Taking back our right to Privacy. It's contents are as follow :

• You can now prevent users from reaching your account by clicking your name on top of a forwarded message.
• You can now restrict access to your profile pictures.
• You can now search settings.
• You now get emoji suggestions tied to words.
• You can now use accessibility features to use telegram even if you are visually impaired.
• You can now delete any message from both sides of a regular private chat, no matter the sender, or when it was sent.

The problematic bit of the update is this last one.
I can go back anywhere in my history with Alice and delete any of my messages, from both sides of the cloud. Alice can do the same. That means that I can delete all of my messages from both sides, and Alice can delete hers from both sides just the same. Together, we have the power to delete all of our conversation.
This can be argued either for, or against. In my opinion, which I share with @durov, it's a good thing :

We know some people may get concerned about the potential misuse of this feature or about the permanence of their chat histories. We thought carefully through those issues, but we think having control over your own digital footprint should be paramount.

Now, we come to the meaty bit. The one that sparked what is probably the most shared, viewed and voted on poll in the history of Telegram.

Here we go : I send Alice a message. Alice can decide to delete my message, either for her devices, or for the both of us. Without asking me. She can delete any message from both our chats, no matter the sender, or the time.

Why it's a problem

As an advocate to my friends and family for Telegram, I am accountable for the trust I place in Telegram, as a secure, functional and reliable platform.
With the latest update, telegram lost all of these to some degree. Durov says : "I feel truly free and in control." I would strongly disagree. I understand the reasoning behind allowing Alice to delete her messages from both sides. It's reasonable, and has limited impact. Alice should be in control of her digital footprint, and that's a fair point to make. However, that's not what this update allows. This update allows Bob to delete Alice's private messages, from both sides. Why ? How is Alice more in control, if Bob holds the trigger to the destruction of up to 6 years of messages ? Alice has lost control over her messages.

Controlling your digital footprint is incompatible with being vulnerable to someone else pressing the trigger.

The responses I get when saying that don't make sense. The first one is that I should backup everything. If that had to be the default, then where would the point be in being able to delete messages from both sides ? The second is that I just shouldn't speak or deal with people who would be susceptible to delete messages. Here's the problem with that argument. As most of you know, humans simply can't be trusted.
They lie, they change, they get drunk, tired, emotional, clumsy, impulsive, they press the wrong buttons, or press it with the intent of doing harm, or think it's a good move and later regret. Do the wrong thing, make a mistake, and all of your history with a person is gone, forever. This might even end friendships, or relations. People simply can't be trusted. Neither you, reading this, nor me, nor your bff, nor your grandma, or uncle, or president. People make mistakes. To err is human. But now, mistakes can have greater consequences than ever.

I have attention deficit disorder. My memory is an ever failing piece of garbage. I used to know that my messages with people were a reliable log of my past. Now my memories are vulnerable to people being human. I don't think that's fair.

My friend Para also mentioned multiple ways this feature could be abused, in manners far worse than just being able to delete your own messages from both sides.

There's only one thing worse than a clumsy and emotional regular human being : an internet user. They think they can get away with anything, and they can. So they abuse people, bully them, make fun of them, troll them. The internet isn't a friendly place, and this feature won't help.

How could this be solved ?

Here's a few options that could dampen the effects of that feature :

• A setting allowing people to delete your messages from your side (default off)
• A prompt asking to wipe the whole conversation from both sides (doesn't need comfirmation from other party if "last seen a long time ago" or if you have been blocked)
• removing the ability to delete someone else's private message entirely

What can people do to help the cause ?

Durov posted a poll on his channel. Vote on it.

Also, use the market place's rating systems and comments. Android users can rate Telegram here, while IOS users can do that here.

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