Immutability and social media as we have come to know them seems like a strange combination
I am not negative to the idea at all, there is probably interesting use cases where keeping (for audit or attribution or whatever other objective) such decentralized logs is useful. But some of these needs might be served eg. using git, whereas others might beyond the reach of users because (while its 2023) it is still a hassle to self-host
That's why Snapchat provides a false sense of security. On a rooted smartphone the privacy feature of self destruct does not work, and there's always the analog hole. There's extensions for platforms like Reddit which show supposedly moderated/deleted content.
Anything put to the public internet is there forever because antisocial corporations and the few individuals who do not respect privacy can operate at scale.
Asking a normal person nicely to delete something almost always works though, especially if not deleting it is a hassle
Snapchat style messages completely solves:
- someone you trust now later becomes untrustworthy and would use old messages against you
- messages are stored on your phone and can be found by someone else later
neither of these can happen if deleting messages is not an expected and normal part of the protocol
it does not solve the problem of sending messages to someone who already wants to hurt you (ie. the public internet)
I don't want to store other people's dataz even if encrypted, and I certainly don't want to have everything I shared being available for eternity, or to have to switch identities periodically.