Comment by fauigerzigerk

>Why is chat not a paper trail?

Many reasons. First, chat doesn't exist. What exists is scores of incompatible chat apps.

I use WhatsApp but I consider WhatsApp messages throwaway because I keep losing them anyway. They are scattered across multiple phones with no way to merge them. Backups are platform specific. Exports don't contain any metadata and can't be imported.

"Chat" is a useless mess, not a paper trail.

For email, I have consistent backups with metadata across many email providers and email clients going back to 2008.