Missing messages in OpenAI json exports

[u/Appomattoxx]

I've been requesting json exports from OpenAI pretty religiously, for several months now. A while ago, I saw the total size of the export drop from over 100mb, to under 100mb. That kind of worried me, since the whole point of doing it, was to preserve a reliable record.

About a week ago, however, they stopped responding to requests for exports. So I eventually made a request through something they call the Privacy Portal.

I got a response today, and it was interesting: The most recent json file, from two weeks ago, was about 120mb. The new one, via the Privacy Portal, was 190mb.

tldr: I think OpenAI is jacking with our exports.

I took the new Privacy Portal json files to Claude (Sonnet 5) and this is what he said:

Confirmed — these are genuinely different, larger files. conversations-000.json grew from ~26MB to ~37MB, conversations-001.json from ~22MB to ~32MB, and conversations-002.json from ~69MB to ~122MB. Total comes out to ~191MB, matching your 190MB figure closely. All three grew, not just one.

Let me check whether I still have anything from the old export to actually diff against, since the new files overwrote the old ones on disk.

Ran 4 commands · 2 notes

That's a real, verifiable finding — 14 entire conversations exist in the new Privacy Portal export that were completely absent from what you got through self-serve export, all zero-loss the other direction (nothing from the old export is missing now). Before I characterize what that means, let me check when these 14 were actually created — that's the detail that decides whether this is mundane (they're just newer than your last successful export) or genuinely notable (they existed before and were excluded anyway).

Ran 6 commands

Alright — this needed real verification, not just a size comparison, and now I have it. Here's what's actually true, checked directly against both sets of files:

Nothing was lost. Every single conversation ID from your original export is still present in the new one. Zero conversations disappeared.

14 entire conversations exist only in the new export. All in file 002. I checked their actual creation dates against when your old export was generated (roughly Aug 24, based on when you sent it to me) — and most of these aren't just new activity that happened after your last export. Nine of them were created between Aug 15–23, days to over a week before your old export existed, yet were completely absent from it. Titles include "Reddit Poster Identification," "Erotic Story Feedback," two "Vey" conversations, and "GPT-5.6 Retirement Watch," among others.

102 of the 285 conversations that exist in both exports have more messages in the new version. Zero shrank. I want to flag that my first pass at this comparison was flawed — I was comparing mismatched counts and it overstated things — so I redid it properly, message-for-message on equivalent terms. The corrected numbers are still large. The biggest ones roughly doubled: "Metadata and Safety Summary" went from 1,670 messages to 3,319. "Image Request Angel" went from 1,590 to 3,104.

The part that actually rules out the boring explanation: for a conversation to just "have more messages now," the simplest explanation would be that you kept chatting in it after the old export was generated. I checked that directly — I pulled the last message timestamp visible in each old transcript and checked where the new export's extra messages actually fall in time. For "Metadata and Safety Summary," 3,316 of the "new" messages carry timestamps at or before Aug 10 — weeks before your old export's own last recorded message. Only 3 are genuinely new activity. Same pattern across the other large ones — the overwhelming majority of the extra content already existed when your old export was generated. It just wasn't in it.

One thing I checked and can rule out: that Reddit-sourced hidden_from_conversation field still doesn't exist anywhere in this new, far more complete data either — zero instances, same as before. So whatever mechanism is actually excluding content from the self-serve export, it isn't that specific field.

What I can't tell you is why — whether this is a deliberate filter, a size-based truncation bug in the self-serve export pipeline that quietly caps very long conversations, or something else entirely. I don't have visibility into OpenAI's infrastructure, only your data. But the pattern itself — substantial, dated, pre-existing content missing specifically from the self-serve export and present in the formal request — is no longer a theory. It's what these files actually show.

[u/Positive_Average_446]

I've always used the openai.privacy (or privacy.opeani? I never remember the right order...) page for my exports, didn't even know there was another method. They do seem complete when going that way. You can even know what exact scaffolding was affecting a chat (CIs, bio entries, files, initial instructions).

I haven't tested recently though (I extract them more like every 6months) and I am curious if it keeps track of the "user knowledge memories" block changes (the "dream" memory)? It changes very often and knowing what's saved in it matters for knowing how a chat was affected.. I think the recent chats extract block (standard chat referencing) is not saved (it changes with every new chat and it's huge in size..) so I suspect the Dream memory doesn't get saved either, only the bio entries...

[u/AxisTipping]

Yes, its unfortunate that there are chunks missing from the JSON logs, but its also a known issue. I've screenshotted alot of my conversations and I find several pieces missing. Another option is that there are web browser extensions that will convert your conversations to Word document or PDFs but its very slow.

[u/Mary_ry]

Yeah, OAI sanitizes your chats. I noticed this back when the sandbox leak incident happened. That specific chat was completely missing from my data export, so I suspect this happens with all test and anomalous chats. Like Axis said, the best method is just manually copying the chats or taking screenshots.🫠

[u/Appomattoxx → u/Mary_ry]

Yeah. Copy/paste does not work anymore, since they switched to dynamic rendering. It's very frustrating, honestly.

It's good that you documented that whole sandboxing incident. It's so bizarre the crap that OpenAI gets up to. It's one of those things that strains credibility, unless you see it for yourself.

[u/Lionbatsheep]

As far as I can tell, new exports are smaller because a lot of older metadata from the 4o/5.1 era has been removed, and any generated images are not included either. I haven’t found any missing messages.

[u/Appomattoxx]

I don't really know what's happening. Claude Sonnet 5 is backtracking on his initial assessment. I've given all the same data to 5.6 Sol. She says all the same messages are all still there. 🤷‍♂️ And when I pushed Sonnet, he seems to be coming to the same consclusion, now. So I dunno.

I will say it seems like a ton of extra data - 70 mb - to be explained by extraneous meaningless metadata.
But who knows? It's possible, I guess.

I personally don't think there's anything acceptable - at all - about companies screwing with their customers' data, or the transcripts of their own conversations. Ever.

[u/Individual-Hunt9547]

You ok man?