“Why am I still unable to publish stories while Telegram claims that this feature is now available to all users, not just Telegram Premium subscribers?”
Perhaps this question is currently the most popular in the Telegram Info community chats over the past one and a half weeks. The @tginfoen editorial team decided to share their thoughts and observations on this matter to clarify the situation.
Publication of stories for users without a subscription is gradually rolling out
The first and most important thing to keep in mind: Pavel Durov, in his Telegram channel post dated August 14, uses a somewhat ambiguous wording:
“Today’s gradual roll-out of stories for all users…“
Messages from people around the world that we have observed since August 14 indicate that the ability to publish stories is still not available to everyone.
But how can one understand when a specific account will be able to publish Telegram stories?
No official data on the nature of the “gradual roll-out” of the feature has been provided
The Telegram administration has not disclosed the principle by which they determine which accounts are granted this ability sooner and which ones later, nor have they provided specific dates for when this might happen for a particular user. Everything written below is merely speculation by the Telegram Info editorial team, which could already be incorrect or might become incorrect in the future.
So, what determines which accounts can publish stories without Telegram Premium, and which ones cannot?
The ability to publish stories depends on the country associated with the phone number
Over two weeks of observations and research, we have not encountered a situation where one user (without a Telegram Premium subscription) from a specific country had this ability, while another person with the same country code did not.
Let’s reiterate: our observations could be flawed and imprecise, and of course, we did not survey all users from any given country; we relied on the connections our editorial team members had. However, no exceptions have been found so far.
Which countries already have the ability to publish stories?
Based on our observations, story publication is currently ❌ unavailable to accounts with numbers from the following countries:
- Russia (+7)
- Ukraine (+380)
- Iran (+98)
- India (+91)
And story publication is already ✅ available to users from these countries:
- Australia (+61)
- Azerbaijan (+994)
- Belarus (+375)
- Cyprus (+357)
- Estonia (+372)
- Germany (+49)
- Iraq (+964)
- Israel (+972)
- Kazakhstan (+7)
- Kyrgyzstan (+996)
- Laos (+856)
- Morocco (+212)
- Poland (+48)
- Portugal (+351)
- Romania (+40)
- Slovenia (+386)
- Sri Lanka (+94)
- Sweden (+46)
- Thailand (+66)
- Turkey (+90)
- United Kingdom (+44)
- Uzbekistan (+998) (since 28.08.2023)
- Indonesia (+62) (since 01.09.2023)
- USA (+1)
- Vietnam (+84)
We currently have no data on other countries, but as soon as we acquire the necessary information, we will update the existing lists.
Last list update date: August 26, 2023
Why can some countries already publish stories, while others cannot?
We do not have a reliable answer to this question. We assume that dividing accounts by countries was simpler, or perhaps there are more substantial reasons for it. Why wasn’t story publication allowed for everyone at once? Perhaps it’s done to mitigate the increasing load on Telegram servers. If millions of users from around the world simultaneously decided to test the new mechanism by publishing media-heavy content like stories, the messenger might simply not withstand the load.
We see that access to the story publication feature is initially granted to people from countries with a small proportion of messenger users. For example, in Russia and Ukraine, where Telegram is actively used by citizens, it’s currently impossible to post stories, whereas in hypothetical Kyrgyzstan and the USA, where there are relatively fewer Telegram users, it’s possible. This aligns with the concept of a phased deployment of the feature to avoid server overload.
However, don’t lose hope just yet: Telegram’s official Twitter account has stated that if you, as a non-Premium subscriber, do not have the ability to publish stories, it will appear soon.
I found an error in this article! What should I do?
Firstly, we would like to ask you not to comment on our channel post if your situation aligns with what we’ve written. Comments like “Indeed, I’m from Russia and still can’t publish stories” won’t benefit other participants in our community.
Additionally, please note that from July 20 to (approximately) August 15, all users of the Telegram Beta version for Android and iOS were able to publish stories regardless of the phone’s country code linked to the account. However, in mid-August, this ability disappeared. So, if you, for instance, have a Russian phone number and published a story on August 1, that doesn’t count!
If your situation contradicts the described facts, be sure to let us know in the comments:
- If your number is from a country listed in the “Available” list but you can’t publish stories, send screenshots showing the country code of your phone number and the absence of story publishing buttons.
- If your number is from a country listed in the “Unavailable” list but you can publish stories, send screenshots showing the country code of your phone number, a recent (meaning published no earlier than when this post was published) story posted by your account, and a link to this story.
If you want to share something about a country not on our lists, we’ll need screenshots that show the situation with Telegram story publication in that country.
⚠️ Please note: testing story publication must be done using a user without an active Telegram Premium subscription and in the latest version of the mobile app:
- Android: version 10.0.4 and newer.
- iOS: version 10.0.1 and newer.