Facebook is inherently different because of the broadcast style of updates rather than targeted messaging. I don't think the intent of usage matters as much of the intent of the system. Facebook statuses are
designed to be fairly public.
> The purpose is to get the truth of the dispute, not prevent liability for people acting badly. Your purpose for not having courts see evidence of wrongdoing is so that what, things are better for the wrongdoers? If your argument is feasibility or removing the recording element at all, I'd understand, but the thing is already recorded.
The purpose of not recording everything is to allow businesses (read: the people within them) to function efficiently without having to worry that anything and everything they say could be dragged into the record on a lawsuit. Also to encourage people to put problems on the record, paradoxically.
I work remotely, meaning face-to-face conversations are out of the question. I'm rapidly running out of ways to communicate that aren't on the record, which poses a communication problem for the business and inhibits dealing with problems that could lead to a lawsuit.
In a world where chats aren't part of the eternal record, I can pop in and say "hey, such and such feature seems like it has a security/privacy risk, we should take a look at that". The communication is valuable, and the business is now aware of the problem.
In a world with eternal chat records, nobody wants me to point that out unless we are ready to deal with it immediately. If I point it out, the business schedules it to be handled in a quarter or two, and they get hacked in the meantime then my chat message is on the record as evidence that the business was aware of the problem and "did nothing". Everyone would prefer that I had said nothing, because the business' liability is diminished if they can say they were unaware of the problem.
The underlying reality here is that business do not want their problems on public record, and will encourage their employees to communicate using non-recorded means or, failing that, to not communicate at all. It would be legally preferable to ship a product full of issues the business is unaware of than to ship a product with a single issue that the business is on record knowing about.
Requiring recording of all communications just encourages the business to not communicate internally, leading to the exact same problems recording was supposed to prevent.
Our legal system does not reward recording communications in the least, it actively penalizes doing so. We're trying to strong arm businesses into doing something against their own best interests, and I'm doubtful that's a productive line of action.