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Telegram's Message Limit: Old Messages Gone Forever
X ✰, Jul 19, 2022 at 18:47, edited
OpenIssueGeneral

When the message count reaches a million, old messages disappear.

Steps to reproduce

  1. Be an active Telegram user
  2. Wait until the coveted number of incoming/outgoing messages is reached.
  3. Eh, it's a shame, the messages are gone!

Device info

123630Copy link
Comments89
X ✰ Jul 19, 2022
Telegram's main web page boasts that the service has «no limits» on the
size of chats. However, with careful testing, we can find this statement
false — that after a given number of messages (around 1 million),
Telegram will stop serving you your own messages. This limitation is
found both in channels/supergroups as well as private messages as a
whole.

For both your private messages (all individual chats with
users and bots) and normal (legacy) groups, there exists a single shared
«counter» of incoming and outgoing messages. This counter, after
reaching a certain limit, will cause telegram to stop serving you your
messages after a certain date. You can check this counter by using
@ArynIDBot or @accountcountbot and sending an inline message to your
Saved Messages. This way, perhaps you too, will discover that your old
messages (doge memes) are now irrevocably lost.

In each
supergroup and channel this «counter» exists individually, outside of
the counter for your private messages. However, it too, is bound by the 1
million limit, which can be verified by heading over to the
@WhereIsMessages supergroup where a total of 5 million messages have
been sent but only a million of which are visible.
X ✰ Jul 19, 2022
Those
encountering this problem in the wild are ostensibly active telegram
users and group chats — communities and people most dependent on this
messenger. Take for example a popular bots developer who "mistakenly"
set his bots to send logs as private messages and thereby lost a lot of
messages from important private chats: t.me/LyBlog/617 (in Russian).

Ultimately
this leads to hacks and workarounds — active telegram users must keep
in mind this limit and create separate channels for their doge memes,
music, bot logs, etc. For many large telegram communities with thousands
of users in supergroups this also presents a problem of continuity that
is unavoidable: old messages simply perish and important history is
irrecoverable. Note that with other community-oriented services like
Discord, this is a non-issue (see attached images).
D
Deleted Account Jul 19, 2022
Seems like they tried to fix it in 2018:
https://twitter.com/telegram/status/1060910769410371584

But they can't.
D
Deleted Account Jul 19, 2022
X ✰
Telegram's main web page boasts that the service has «no limits» on the size of chats. However, with careful testing, we can find this statement false — that after a given number of messages (around 1 million), Telegram will stop serving you your own messages. This limitation is found both in channels/supergroups as well as private messages as a whole. For both your private messages (all individual chats with users and bots) and normal (legacy) groups, there exists a single shared «counter» of incoming and outgoing messages. This counter, after reaching a certain limit, will cause telegram to stop serving you your messages after a certain date. You can check this counter by using @ArynIDBot or @accountcountbot and sending an inline message to your Saved Messages. This way, perhaps you too, will discover that your old messages (doge memes) are now irrevocably lost. In each supergroup and channel this «counter» exists individually, outside of the counter for your private messages. However, it too, is bound by the 1 million limit, which can be verified by heading over to the @WhereIsMessages supergroup where a total of 5 million messages have been sent but only a million of which are visible.
Known
D
Deleted Account Jul 20, 2022
Btw:
Remove 1 million posts limit in chats #4386
Snow Cat Jul 21, 2022
Deleted Account
Btw: https://bugs.telegram.org/c/4386
According to this bug report only chats are affected, but the million message limit applies everywhere (even in PM).
>_run Jul 21, 2022
Hey!
I think the limit for private chats & channels should be kept, but for groups it should be deleted. No one reads too old messages in PMs or Channels(btw, reaching 1 mln messages is unreal though, unless you flood the chat), but for big groups, it is a disadvantage.
D
Deleted Account Jul 26, 2022
>_run
Hey! I think the limit for private chats & channels should be kept, but for groups it should be deleted. No one reads too old messages in PMs or Channels(btw, reaching 1 mln messages is unreal though, unless you flood the chat), but for big groups, it is a disadvantage.
me and my gf had like 2mil of messages in 2 years, so it’s really easy to reach this limit
>_run Jul 26, 2022
Deleted Account
me and my gf had like 2mil of messages in 2 years, so it’s really easy to reach this limit
Lol, interesting. Do you need to read those messages?
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