I've had a 90-day message retention policy set in WhatsApp ever since the feature became available. Not because I doubt my ability to manage secure backups, but because I don't expect my contacts to act equally careful.

I wish Signal supported a 90-day retention period. Four weeks (Signal max) is often too short for my contacts, which leads people to disable it altogether.

I also find it frustrating that Signal only applies your message retention policy to the conversation when you initiate the conversation, not when others do. As a result, more of my conversations end up being ephemeral on WhatsApp than on Signal, which feels a bit ironic.