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>Telegram does an excellent job at ephemerality from a practical standpoint. Without being able to audit their server though, we have no clue if 'disappeared' chats and messages are actually scrubbed from their server.

Aren't disappearing messages a feature of secret chats? If my understanding is correct here, these messages are not backed up to the cloud. Rather they are stored within your device. That's precisely why e2ee synced chats are not available.

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I wasn't referencing E2EE, I was specifically talking about their regular 'cloud' chats. I am speaking of features like deleting old messages from prior chats or even going as far as removing your account. These are not possible to do on many other more secure chat systems, I cannot tell you how many new Matrix users are frustrated that this is not possible there but it's simply not in a federated system, cannot force other servers to scrub your server's messages. It is practical to have this ability to tear down comms and scrub a shareh/synched history but it is nor perfect.

You are correct about their secret chats. The secret chats limitations (inability to sync) actually encourage destroying and recreating sessions when needed vs Signal that is intended for longer synched sessions. Not having to worry about those sessions syncing to a system you may not be in front of is also a benefit.

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