Slack removes free lifetime message history from non-paying users

Slack has found a new way to get you to buy its premium plans. It will no longer store your message history and files, older than a year, for the lifetime of your workspace. Starting August 26, 2024, Slack will permanently delete message history and files for free workspace users, on a rolling basis.

If you’re a free user in the current configuration, Slack shows up to 90 days of messages and files you download. You need a premium subscription to access the old history, which isn’t deleted but hidden until you upgrade.

The latest change means Slack will only keep your message history and files for up to a year. You’ll still get the full 90 days of free access, and you’ll unlock the extra 275 days by upgrading to a paid plan.

“Going forward, this workspace data will be deleted on a rolling basis once it’s more than a year old,” Slack said on a support page . It warns that if you plan to upgrade to paid Slack after August 26, it won’t be possible to restore messages and files once the deletion is done.

This change also applies to people using the Slack trial. Once the trial ends, their workspace data “will be subject to our message and file deletion policy for free workspaces.” However, it added that the new message history limit does not affect Slack Connect channels and that they “will continue to operate normally, and all messages and files contained in them will remain available.”

Slack will also change data retention settings for free workspaces, where users will have to choose whether messages or files (including edits) are deleted after 90 days or retained for a year. They will no longer see the option to retain their data for the lifetime of their workspace.

The latest update comes a month after the team messaging platform was accused of using customer data such as messages, content, and files to train its AI models. However, in a statement to Neowin, Slack defended itself and said that “these machine learning models do not access the original content of messages in DMs, private channels, or public channels to make these suggestions.”