REDUCING THE DIGITAL CLUTTER OF CHATS
by Ploum on 2025-05-23
https://ploum.net/2025-05-23-chats-digital-clutter.html
I hate modern chats. They presuppose we are always online, always
available to chat. They force us to see and think about them each time
we get our eyes on one of our devices. Unlike mailboxes, they are never
empty. We can’t even easily search through old messages (unlike the chat
providers themselves, which use the logs to learn more about us). Chats
are the epitome of the business idiot: they make you always busy but
prevent you from thinking and achieving anything.
It is quite astonishing to realise that modern chat systems use 100 or
1000 times more resources (in size and computing power) than 30 years
ago, that they are less convenient (no custom client, no search) and
that they work against us (centralisation, surveillance, ads). But, yay,
custom emojis!
Do not get me wrong: chats are useful! When you need an immediate
interaction or a quick on-the-go message, chats are the best.
I needed to keep being able to chat while keeping the digital clutter to
a minimal and preserving my own sanity. That’s how I came up with the
following rules.
Rule 1: One chat to rule them all
=================================
One of the biggest problems of centralised chats is that you must be on
many of them. I decided to make Signal my main chat and to remove
others.
Signal was, for me, a good compromise of respecting my privacy, being
open source and without ads while still having enough traction that I
could convince others to join it.
Yes, Signal is centralised and has drawbacks like relying on some Google
layers (which I worked around by using Molly-FOSS). I simply do not see
XMPP, Matrix or SimpleX becoming popular enough in the short term. Wire
and Threema had no advantages over Signal. I could not morally justify
using Whatsapp nor Telegram.
In 2022, as I decided to use Signal as my main chat, I deleted all
accounts but Signal and Whatsapp and disabled every notification from
Whatsapp, forcing myself to open it once a week to see if I had missed
something important. People who really wanted to reach me quickly
understood that it was better to use Signal. This worked so well that I
forgot to open Whatsapp for a whole month which was enough for Whatsapp
to decide that my account was not active anymore.
Le suicide de mon compte WhatsApp (ploum.net)
https://ploum.net/le-suicide-de-mon-compte-whatsapp/index.html
Not having Whatsapp is probably the best thing which happened to me
regarding chats. Suddenly, I was out of tenths or hundreds of group
chats. Yes, I missed lots of stuff. But, most importantly, I stopping
fearing missing them. Seriously, I never missed having Whatsapp. Not
once. Thanks Meta for removing my account!
While travelling in Europe, it is now standard that taxi and hotels will
chat with you using Whatsapp. Not anymore for me. Guess what? It works
just fine. In fact, I suspect it works even better because people are
forced to either do what we agreed during our call or to call me, which
requires more energy and planning.
Rule 2: Mute, mute, mute!
=========================
Now that Signal is becoming more popular, some group chats are migrating
to it. But I’ve learned the lesson : I’m muting them. This allows me to
only see the messages when I really want to look at them. Don’t hesitate
to mute vocal group chats and people with whom you don’t need day-to-day
interaction.
I’m also leaving group chats which are not essential. Whatsapp deletion
told me that nearly no group chat is truly essential.
Many times, I’ve had people sending me emails about what was told on a
group chat because they knew I was not there. Had I been on that group,
I would probably have missed the messages but nobody would have cared.
If you really want to get in touch with me, send me an email!
Rule 3: No read receipts nor typing indicators
==============================================
I was busy, walking in the street with my phone in hands for directions.
A notification popped up with an important message. It was important but
not urgent. I could not deal with the message at that moment. I wanted
to take the time. One part of my brain told me not to open the message
because, if I did, the sender would see a "read receipt". He would see
that I had read the message but would not receive any answer.
For him, that would probably translate in "he doesn’t care". I
consciously avoided to open Signal until I was back home and could deal
with the message.
That’s when I realised how invasive the "read receipt" was. I disabled
it and never regretted that move. I’m reading messages on my own watch
and replying when I want to. Nobody needs to know if I’ve seen the
message. It is wrong in every aspect.
Signal preferences showing read receipts and typing indicator disabled
https://ploum.net/files/signal_receipts.jpg
Rule 4: Temporary discussions only
==================================
The artist Bruno Leyval, who did the awesome cover of my novel Bikepunk,
is obsessed with deletion and disappearance. He set our Signal chat so
that every message is deleted after a day. At first, I didn’t see the
point.
Until I understood that this was not only about privacy, it also was
about decluttering our mind, our memories.
Since then, I’ve set every chat in Signal to delete messages after one
week.
Signal preferences showing disappearing messages set to one week
https://ploum.net/files/signal_disappearing.jpg
This might seem like nothing but this changes everything. Suddenly,
chats are not a long history of clutter. Suddenly, you see chats as
transient and save things you want to keep. Remember that you can’t
search in chats? This means that chats are transient anyway. With most
chats, your history is not saved and could be lost by simply dropping
your phone on the floor. Something important should be kept in a chat?
Save it! But it should probably have been an email.
Embracing the transient nature of chat, making it explicit greatly
reduce the clutter.
Conclusion
==========
I know that most of you will say that "That’s nice Ploum but I can’t do
that because everybody is on XXX" where XXX is most often Whatsapp in my
own circles. But this is wrong: you believe everybody is on XXX because
you are yourself using XXX as your main chat. When surveying my students
this year, I’ve discovered that nearly half of them was not on Whatsapp.
Not for some hard reason but because they never saw the need for it. In
fact, they were all spread over Messenger, Instagram, Snap, Whatsapp,
Telegram, Discord. And they all believed that "everybody is where I am".
In the end, the only real choice to make is between being able to get
immediately in touch with a lot of people or having room for your mental
space. I choose the latter, you might prefer the former. That’s fine!
I still don’t like chat. I’m well aware that the centralised nature of
Signal makes it a short-term solution. But I’m not looking for the best
sustainable chat. I just want fewer chats in my life.
If you want to get in touch, send me an email!
