Dear elpolvo,
Thanks for your feedback.
One issue surrounding permanent deletion of private messages is that only one copy of a given message exists on our server even though both the sender sees it in his or her sent items, and the recipient sees it in his or her inbox (or deleted items, as it were). So if we truly deleted that one copy when the recipient deleted it, the sender would no longer have a record of it either.
A belief that other online message board services actually delete PMs when you click the "delete" button in many if not most cases is probably inaccurate. That said, we are planning a well needed, major overhaul of SI's messaging system and messaging interface and intend to provide means to make messages more manageable, the interface more intuitive, likely to including the permanent removal from one's deleted items if so desired. Messages would likely not be technically deleted until (at least) both the sender and recipient had deleted them.
We do take user privacy and the right to anonymity seriously here, and in general would inform a user of any court order we received to furnish private information or communications before considering acting upon the order. This would additionally allow the user themselves to seek to quash such an order. There are exceptions even in this, however; for example we would not shield sender privacy from legal authorities in the private transmission of child pornography using our systems. That said, we are very proud of SI's long history of supporting the right of users to anonymously deliberate stocks.
With respect to public messages, we like this system the way it is. The record is the record. In fact, we plan to add the stock price at time of message post to messages on our boards in stock forums. So, if you recommended shorting Netflix in January of this year, you are probably going to have to learn to live with that post and the price at the time of the post sitting right next to it. We don't want facilitate historical revision to protect the reputation of a user's SI alias. We love the way our system empowers end users to make informed judgments about other participants' credibility - especially in recommending the purchase or sale of assets - based upon their own words in an accurate, lengthy historical context.
Regards,
@Dima |
