Unable to fetch all message from my group -- do they expire?

[Kyle V]

Hi,

In 2021, I wrote a script to fetch all the messages that ever existed in one of my groups. The group was created in May of 2012, and when I first ran this script in 2021, there were about 56k messages and I was able to retrieve all of them. 

I did it as the API suggests -- by chaining requests to the GET endpoint with the before_id param until I get a 304 response, indicating the end of the list.


Example request: 

https://api.groupme.com/v3/groups/{group_id}/messages?token={token}&limit=100&before_id=173576468252469101  

Now, I'm trying to do the same thing in 2025. The same chaining strategy works to a point, but it stops before reaching the end. It only goes back about 62k messages. Last message it returns is from Aug 2013. I know from the GET @ /groups/{group_id} endpoint that there are now 70k messages in this group. 

It almost seems like messages before that were deleted from GroupMe's server. But Aug 2013 was about 11.5 years ago...that seems like an arbitrary shelf life. It would make more sense if the messages only went back 10 years or something. 

Does anyone have any insight here? Are those messages just lost? Perhaps the storage reached a certain GB threshold and GroupMe just deleted the first N-bytes-worth of messages in the chat history.

Any help is appreciated -- thanks!

[Biden 2020]

Hi. 

I don't know the answer to your question, but I am curious myself.

Do you still have the backup from 2012. If so, can you try to access it via the API?

Also, you may want to consider joining the "Public GroupMe API Development Chat" on GroupMe, we are a lot more active there. 

Please keep us posted with any new information, thanks!