> If securely back up all* of your text messages and the last 45 days’ worth of media for free. > If you want to back up your media history beyond 45 days, as well as your message history, we also offer a paid subscription plan for US$1.99 per month.

So after so many years of having a serious design flaw this poor substitute of a backup where you can't even save all your text for free is all they've managed to come up with?

> The reason we’re doing this is simple: media requires a lot of storage, and storing and transferring large amounts of data is expensive.

Easy fix: let the user choose his own local/cloud storage location? (at least it's planned, maybe in just another decade)

I guess the reason WhatsApp lets you save all your text for free is they are making money off sucking up your data. I think ultimately this model will win, but I sympathise with Signal's approach.