Feature request: self-destruct messages X time after sending

[Mikaela]

Suggestion

I would like to set an event in my room to have all messages removed from well-behaved-unpatched homeservers X time from being sent.

For example, Telegram has options off, 24 hours or 7 days, after it's set, messages that turn that time old are removed from the group. Similar feature exists in Signal and WhatsApp.

I understand that there is currently #2228 implemented in Synapse experimentally, but it's a per-event rather than per-room.

Keywords: self-destructing messages, disappearing messages, automatically removing messages, message auto remove, message auto deletion

[Mikaela]

It turns out that this feature exists and can be used through /devtools while it's not particularly human friendly and uses milliseconds, (thanks @sl:feneas.org) permalink

• https://brendan.abolivier.bzh/matrix-retention-policies/

[richvdh]

I think this is a basically a duplicate of matrix-org/matrix-spec#32.

The retention policies implemented in Synapse follow a spec proposal at #1763, and as you note go a long way to solving this.