Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's not that simple at all, especially in combination with automation and computing. What you are saying is that it is not possible to have an off-the-record chat app, because the data of the app will ALWAYS be stored somehow, even if it is just in RAM. Would you agree that this is what you are saying? Maybe the world is just more complicated than you'd like to admit.
> What you are saying is that it is not possible to have an off-the-record chat app No, it’s not at all what I’m saying. What I’m saying is that if you are keeping records of what’s said for a time like most chat apps do then these records are indeed records and no amount of hypothetical distorting regarding RAM or amount of time or what not will change the fact that they are records and you will have to keep them if…
But ... its not that simple any more.
A lot of the time, apps will be hibernated/suspended to disk, and then restored from disk. So talking about ram and storage in context of devices its kind of hard. Even some browsers now "suspend" your tabs to ssd, and then resume when you click back to them. So it's kind of hard to say if something was never on the disk or not.
I guess you could go with intent, that either app intentionally stored something or not, but then again you also design apps with suspend in mind so not sure how this one would play out.