Reprinted from TidBITS by permission; reuse governed by Creative Commons
license BY-NC-ND 3.0. TidBITS has offered years of thoughtful commentary
on Apple and Internet topics. For free email subscriptions and access to the
entire TidBITS archive, visit http://www.tidbits.com/


          Slack to Stop Storing Historical Content for Free Workspaces

   Adam Engst

   In its Help Center, [1]Slack writes:

     We will be reducing our data storage offering for the free version
     of Slack; starting August 26, 2024, we'll begin deleting messages
     and files more than one year old from free workspaces on a rolling
     basis.

   Several years ago, Slack changed the terms for its free plans to
   provide access to the last 90 days of messages and files rather than
   limiting to 10,000 messages and 5 GB of files (see '[2]Examining
   Slack's New Free Plan Restrictions and Motivations,' 27 July 2022).
   That annoyed the admins of some free teams, though I've seldom found
   searching in Slack helpful.

   Slack is changing the carrot/stick balance for free workspaces yet
   again. In the past, if you switched from a free to a paid plan, all
   your old messages and files suddenly reappeared. Now, if you upgrade
   after 26 August 2024, only those items from the last year will
   return'everything older will have been deleted. Nothing changes if you
   have no desire to upgrade and don't care about older data.

   From Slack's perspective, this policy update will reduce its data
   storage needs and may trigger some upgrades in the next two months. I
   doubt most free existing teams were dragging their heels on upgrading
   because they knew they could always recover all their old content. But
   perhaps it will increase the incentive for new free teams to upgrade.

   [3]Read original article

References

   1. https://slack.com/help/articles/29414264463635-Updates-to-message-and-file-history-on-free-workspaces
   2. https://tidbits.com/2022/07/27/examining-slacks-new-free-plan-restrictions-and-motivations/
   3. https://slack.com/help/articles/29414264463635-Updates-to-message-and-file-history-on-free-workspaces

.