We should check Tp::RecievedMessage::isScrollback() and not emit notifications if this is true. (original report) In fact, with xmpp and multi user chat, you configure the server to send the history of a room when a user join it: http://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0045.html#enter-history I'm using a server which sends the last week of history, so when I join a chatroom, telepathy spawns thousands of notifications during at least 1 or 2 minutes.