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Comments in the Telegram channel: how to enable and how to collect leads

September 13, 2026 · Command CHBT · Telegram, Channels

Comments in a Telegram channel are not a switch, but a separate group associated with the channel. While it is not there, there is no “Comment” button under the posts, no questions from readers. Most of the article is about procedure and operation: how to create a discussion group and link it, to whom to give what rights, what settings to close against spam, what to do when spam has already arrived, what are the limits of Telegram and why “comments don’t appear.” At the end - a short answer to the business question “what about leads?”: The CHBT bot works in private and does not read comments, so leads from the discussion are transferred into a personal conversation with a deep link or a code word.

How comments work: channel plus discussion group

The channel does not have its own comments on Telegram. There is a linking mechanism: a regular group is connected to the channel, and each new channel post automatically appears in it as a message. Replies to this message are “comments” - a button with their number is shown under the post in the channel, and when clicked, a thread from the group opens.

From this follows several practical things:

Comments live in the group. Delete spam, ban the author, limit links - all these are the settings of the group, not the channel.
A channel reader can leave a comment without explicitly joining the group: Telegram opens a thread directly from the post. But if he wants, he can go to the entire group and see discussions of all posts.
One group is linked to one channel. If the group already serves another channel, you must first unlink it there.
Comments appear only under posts published after linking. Old posts remain without them.

The channel owner or administrator with the right to change the channel settings can link. If you don’t see the “Discussion” item in the settings, it’s a matter of rights.

Turn it on: step by step on your phone and computer

On the phone (iOS and Android).

Open the channel, click on its name at the top - the profile will open channel.
Click “Edit” (pencil icon).
Select item "Discussion".
Click "Create a new group" - Telegram itself will create a closed group with the name of the channel and add a word "Chat" Or select an existing group from the list where you are an administrator.
Confirm. Done: a comment button will appear under the next post.

On a computer (Telegram Desktop).

Open the channel, click on the three dots in the upper right corner → “Manage channel".
Item "Discussion" → "Create a new group" or select existing.
Save changes.

If you link an existing group, Telegram will warn that it will become available to subscribers of the channel, and the regular group will be converted into a supergroup - this irreversible, but harmless to the discussion group. Administrator rights from the channel to the group are not transferred: assign those who will moderate comments as group admins separately.

Test: publish a test post. The caption “Comment” or “0 comments” should appear under it. If it is not there, see the section about common problems below.

Group settings that need to be done right away

Telegram creates a default discussion group with full participant rights. For a channel with an audience of more than several hundred people, this means spam in the first week. Five settings in “Group Management” → “Permissions” and neighboring items:

Sending links and media. Prohibit links to participants if the channel is not about sharing materials: almost all the spam in the comments is links. Stickers and GIFs can also be closed, they clog up threads.
Slow mode. An interval of 30–60 seconds between messages from one participant reduces flooding and “cheating” of comments bots.
Aggressive antispam. Available for groups of 200 or more members in the “Administrators” → group settings section. Telegram itself deletes messages that look like spam; in case of false positives, the admin can mark the message as “not spam.”
Administrators-moderators. At least two people with the rights to delete messages and block participants. Spam in the comments, hanging for a day, is perceived by readers as an abandoned channel.
Comments on behalf of channels. A user with his own channel can write on his behalf - this is used for advertising. Such a “commentator channel” is blocked in the same way as a participant: through the message menu.

Pin one message in the group with the rules and - important for later - with a link to the bot: “Questions about price and requests - here.” Why this is needed will be explained below.

Admin Roles and Comment Moderation

The rights of channel administrators do not apply to the discussion group: these are two different chats with two lists of admins. Moderators are appointed in the group itself: “Group management” → “Administrators” → “Add administrator”. To work with comments, three rights are enough - “Delete messages”, “Blocking users”, “Pin messages”. Leave the “Add administrators” and “Change group profile” rights to the owner: one hacked moderator account with full rights takes away the entire group along with the discussion history.

Four details that are usually found out late:

Moderator anonymity. The administrator has a “Remain Anonymous” switch: his messages are signed with the group name, not his personal account. For those who remove spam and resolve conflicts, this is protection from private messages and bullying.
Reply on behalf of the channel. Channel administrators can comment on their behalf - the author is selected in the menu next to the input field. Let’s give official answers (“we’ll clarify the prices in a private message”), and not from a personal account: readers perceive the channel’s signature as the company’s position.
"Recent Actions" The log in “Group Management” shows over the last 48 hours who deleted what, who blocked and what settings they changed. If the comments “disappeared”, look here first.
Comments under one post are closed separately. Delete a copy of a post in a discussion group - the comment button under it in the channel will disappear, other posts will not be affected. Convenient for announcements and posts with rules.

The moderation regulations fit into three lines: spam and insults - delete and block without discussion; criticism on the matter - leave and respond; questions about price, registration and personal conditions - answer in one phrase and transfer to a bot in a personal message (how to - at the end of the article). The response time during business hours is up to an hour: spam that hangs around for a day is read as a sign of an abandoned channel.

How to disable comments or change group

Disabling is the same setting. In the channel profile → “Edit” → “Discussion” → "Unlink group". The comment button disappears under all posts at once, including old ones. The group is not deleted - it remains a regular group with history; You can delete it separately if discussions are not needed.

Changing a group: first unlink the current one, then bind a new one. Comments on posts that were in the old group are not transferred to the new one - they will no longer appear under these posts.

You can temporarily close comments without unlinking the group through permissions: remove the “Send messages” right from participants. The button under posts will remain, but only administrators will be able to write. This is convenient for weekends or for times when there is no one to moderate.

Spam has already arrived: procedure

The settings from the section above remove most of the problems, but spam still comes to a channel with a noticeable audience in waves - after a mention in another channel, advertising, or being included in a collection. Procedure for the duration of the wave:

Delete and block in one action. Message menu → “Delete” → check “Block user”, “Report spam” and “Delete all messages”. This way, the entire series of comments from the spammer disappears, rather than just one message, and Telegram receives a signal for its filters.
Commentary channels. Spam on behalf of the channel is blocked in the same way - through the message menu; After blocking, this channel in your group will not be able to write.
Tighten the regime for a day. Slow mode up to 1–5 minutes and banning links for participants; when the wave subsides, return to normal settings. You can completely close comments without unlinking the group by removing the “Send messages” right, as described above.
Moderator bot. Third-party bots for groups - captcha at login, auto-deletion of links, stop words - are added by the administrator to the discussion group and work there normally. The CHBT bot is not suitable for this role: it does not work in groups and does not read comments, there is no point in adding it there.

What not to do: do not delete or unlink the group “to clean everything up”. Discussions under all posts will disappear along with spam, and they will not be returned. Don’t remove the rules from the post either—after a wave of spam, it’s the post that explains to new readers where to write on business.

Telegram limits that influence decisions

One group - one channel, and vice versa. A channel grid requires a separate discussion group for each.
A discussion group is always a supergroup: up to 200,000 members, a regular group is irreversibly transformed when linked. This limit is sufficient for comments on the channel.
Slow mode — intervals from 10 seconds to 1 hour between messages from one participant; Does not apply to administrators.
Aggressive antispam included only in groups of 200 participants. In a small group, expect permissions and manual moderation.
Only Telegram users comment. You cannot leave a comment without an account, like on the site; Anyone can read a thread in a public channel.
There are no comments on old posts — the binding applies to posts after it. The only way to give an old post a discussion is to republish it.
A thread is messages in a group. A participant who has entered the entire group sees discussions of all posts in a row; There are no closed “only under this post” threads.
The channel does not have separate “new comment under post” notifications. In order not to miss questions, the moderator keeps the group in pinned chats with notifications turned on, or a duty is assigned to the team.

Common problems

There is no "Discussion" item in the settings. You are not the owner of the channel or an administrator with the “Edit Channel Profile” right. Ask the owner to issue the right or do the binding yourself.

The group does not appear in the selection list. You are not an administrator in this group, or it is already linked to another channel. The second case is that Telegram usually signs directly in the list.

The group is not linked: “Topics” are included in it. A group with topics (forum) cannot be a discussion group - disable topics in the group settings and repeat the linking or create a new group using the “Create a new group” button.

There are no comments under old posts. This is the norm: the link applies to posts published after it. The only way to give an old post a discussion is to republish it.

There is no button under new post. Make sure that the setting is saved: open “Discussion” again - the group should be indicated there. If the field is empty, the link did not go through, repeat it and publish the post again.

Comments disappeared under all posts. One of the administrators unlinked the group - open “Recent Activity” in the channel and see who and when. Link the group again: old threads will remain in the group, but buttons under posts published before re-linking will not return.

Readers write that they cannot comment. Three reasons by frequency: participants’ rights to “Send messages” or “Send links” have been removed; a person was blocked in a group (check the list of blocked people in “Group Management”); Slow mode prevents you from writing a second message in a row. Less often, the reader tries to insert a link or sticker where it is prohibited, and does not see the reason for the refusal.

There is a third-party moderator bot in the group, but it does not respond. Bots in groups have privacy mode enabled: without administrator rights, the bot sees only commands and mentions. Give him admin rights or turn off privacy mode for @BotFather. This does not apply to the bot CHBT - it is not added to the group.

Applications - PM the bot: deep link or code word

The CHBT bot works in private messages: it is not added to the discussion group, and does not read or respond to comments. An lead in a comment is a bad lead in itself - public, without a phone number and consent to data processing, lost a day later under a new post. Therefore, the task is formulated differently: to transfer a person from a comment to a bot’s PM in one action. There are two ways.

Deeplink - link like https://t.me/имя_бота?start=post142 the last line of the post, in pinned in the group (“questions about price and registration in the bot’s PM”) and in the administrator’s template response to the comment. According to it, the “Deep Link” trigger is triggered in CHBT, and the script starts from the right place - usually this is “Collection of applications”: confirmation with a button, “Data collection” with the phone, “Action” → tag with the post number, “Transaction in CRM” and “Notify” operator." Code word - “write the word CALCULATION to the bot”: a person opens the bot using the link from the channel description and writes the word, the script launches the “Keyword” trigger. A deep link converts better for one-time offers, a code word - for regular columns where it is remembered.

The bot cannot write to the commentator first - until the person himself clicks “Start”, you cannot send him a message (why is that), so the link should explain the benefits of the transition, and not just call “to the bot”. How the link “post → deep link → PM” is structured, lead magnet schemes and applications from the post, segmentation by payload and mailing to those who opened the bot - in the article what a bot can do for the Telegram channel; Keyword comparison modes and selection of the words themselves are in the article about the code word in the bot. One flow works in Telegram, MAX and VKontakte from one project, and on the Free plan the combination can be tested on two or three posts: one bot, all channels, 30 conversations per month. Create a bot for the channel →

Telegram bot constructor “Lead capture” template What can a bot do for a channel?Code word in the bot