The argument is a harasser can send a harassing message and then delete it, "destroying" the evidence.
Which, I find a bit ridiculous. It’s not Apple’s job to preserve a record. Someone has the same potential to be harassed on a voice call, with no record if it happening. If someone is harassing, iMessage offers the ability to block, and screenshots can be taken the moment a message is sent if the receiver wishes to preserve evidence.
Apple could always keep the record of edits as part of the sender’s and receiver’s iCloud iMessages log, and provide them to law enforcement when a subpoena is presented, similar to Slack with compliance settings enabled.
Presentation layer vs data layer sort of thing.
I wouldn’t use it in that case. I disable iCloud backups for iMessage, use Signal whenever possible, and encourage those I talk to to do the same. Privacy and security are important to me, and we’ve all seen how easy it is to fake an administrative subpoena.
You aren’t the target market. The casual/average Apple ecosystem user won’t care.
You don't see anything wrong with Apple letting other people remotely delete stuff from your phone?
The actual title of the article does not contain scare quotes:
Victim advocate calls on Apple to rethink how its iMessage edit feature works
I would time cap it to “you can edit for 10 minutes after sending”. HN doesn’t let you edit past an hour for comparison