flighty_sloth it's an upstream design choice by Signal.
To be clear, this is not a choice by Signal. It is a choice by Molly, and more generally one made by developers of many projects. Version changes can lead to differences in database structures and other quirks. So, it could lead to problems and data loss if you attempt to use data when there is a version mismatch.
Molly documents this on their migrating from Signal and warning about backups project pages. Turn off autoupdates for Signal and wait a week or two.