Concerns from dev

Full thread: https://hub.mattermost.com/private-core/pl/esiujno5jbyhpy657siswgbyte

From Daniel:

What means delivered in our context? Sent to the server? Then we should ditch the optimistic sending of messages (or do as WhatsApp with the step from clock to one tick).

Does it mean sent to a device? How do we expect to do that? I can think of a few, but none of them are reliable.

Tracking has a cost. Not only a dev time cost (which should not be neglected) but also user experience cost.

Our platform is centralized. The source of truth is the server. There are few details regarding the different clients. All clients consume and modify the same data. So tracking, for example, to which client it has been sent, and how, can be really costly. Doable? Of course. But costly.

From my perspective, read receipts do not guarantee mission critical communication. Send confirmation? Yes. Read receipts? No.

To put a bit of color to my previous argument, think of the many times you have open a chat in whatsapp (or any other similar app) without properly reading the message and though "I will answer this later" and you never did.

The other side can think "oh, he read the message, but he is ghosting me" when the reality is "I didn't read the message, planned to answer later, and forgot".

For informal communication is a manageable risk. For mission critical communication it is a risk we cannot take (in my opinion).

From Guilleremo

Has there been any changes since we last discussed? It was clear that read receipts was actually acting contrary to the problem that was trying to solve in our case and thus we moved into the message priority.

Why is it contrary? because in a work environment where people are trusting that the "blue-double-check" means acknowledging a message (not just read, but mentally perceived and processed) is not something that happens by just having a screen open.

Just one nit: WhatsApp seems to be centralized, like us. They keep messages on the server, which are synced when you install/uninstall/move clients.

AFAIK this is done via backups, if you move from android to iphone, you loose the info. It might have changed as there is not a lot published.

the marked as read automatically works against that as it will send a ton of false positives that will erode the system's trust.