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Employees in almost every industry today use messaging platforms like Slack, Microsoft Teams, and Signal to conduct business. But on many of those platforms, messages are "ephemeral": messages can disappear -- or be deleted -- from both the sender and receiver's devices after a specific time. Now, two government agencies are requiring some companies to preserve those workplace conversations.

Today, the Federal Trade Commission and U.S. Department of Justice announced updates to their standard preservation letters, requiring companies to keep these communications if the government investigates the business.

The FTC and DOJ have long required companies to preserve materials related to their investigations. But the agencies hope this update will dissuade companies from keeping workplace messages secret during ongoing investigations.

Last year, an indictment against FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried revealed that he had deleted several messages sent over Twitter and Slack, Business Insider reported. One message was from the company's general counsel, who warned that the crypto exchange needed to be shut down.

"These updates to our legal process will ensure that neither opposing counsel nor their clients can feign ignorance when their clients or companies choose to conduct business through ephemeral messages," said Manish Kumar, deputy assistant attorney general of the Justice Department's Antitrust Division, in the statement.

If a company fails to produce evidence from messaging or collaboration platforms, they may be liable to obstruction of justice charges, Kumar noted. Additionally, as seen in a 2022 case against Bia Capital Management and Bia's founder Gregory Moeller, failing to save messages as required could mean that the company automatically loses its case in court.

"Companies and individuals have a legal responsibility to preserve documents when involved in government investigations or litigation in order to promote efficient and effective enforcement that protects the American public," said Henry Liu, director of the FTC's Bureau of Competition, in the press release. "Today's update reinforces that this preservation responsibility applies to new methods of collaboration and information-sharing tools, even including tools that allow for messages to disappear via ephemeral messaging capabilities."