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Telegram is experiencing a service degradation caused by an external issue. Telegram’s t.me short domain has been placed in serverHold status by its registry. It relies on this domain for user contact links and shared content. In this state, the domain cannot resolve. As a result, all Telegram contact links and shared links using the t.me format are failing to load. You can follow the community’s evolving discussion in the Hacker News thread on the t.me outage.
What the t.me Domain Does
The t.me domain serves two primary purposes. First, it powers user contact addresses. If a user’s handle is @12345, outsiders can open t.me/12345 in a browser. That link loads a web page or launches a Telegram conversation. Second, it handles content sharing. When a user copies a message link inside Telegram, the resulting URL also uses the t.me domain.
What Is Broken and What Telegram Has Done
With the domain now unresolvable, a vast volume of previously shared t.me links are inaccessible across the internet. Telegram has responded by activating the fallback domain telegram.me for new content sharing. However, links already shared using the t.me format cannot be recovered until the domain is restored.
Who Controls .ME and Why It Was Blocked
The .ME country code top-level domain belongs to Montenegro and is administered by the registry domainME. The serverHold status was applied without explanation, and the reason for the restriction remains unclear. Somewhat ironically, the domainME website had previously listed Telegram as a trusted client of the .ME domain.
Pavel Durov Contacts domainME Publicly
Telegram founder Pavel Durov mentioned domainME on X, requesting assistance. Telegram has likely also reached out through other channels to request removal of the hold. As of several hours after the issue appeared, the domain had not been restored.
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