diff --git a/CHANGELOG.md b/CHANGELOG.md
index 5c8b9f65171..acd2d3739b0 100644
--- a/CHANGELOG.md
+++ b/CHANGELOG.md
@@ -1,5 +1,6 @@
 ## main / unreleased
 
+* [CHANGE] **BREAKING CHANGE** Removed `internal_error` as a reason from `tempo_discarded_spans_total`. [#4554](https://github.com/grafana/tempo/pull/4554) (@joe-elliott)
 * [BUGFIX] Choose a default step for a gRPC streaming query range request if none is provided. [#4546](https://github.com/grafana/tempo/pull/4546) (@joe-elliott)
   Fix an issue where the tempo-cli was not correctly dumping exemplar results.
 
diff --git a/modules/distributor/distributor.go b/modules/distributor/distributor.go
index 5d71e877f6b..6935bd54b7f 100644
--- a/modules/distributor/distributor.go
+++ b/modules/distributor/distributor.go
@@ -54,8 +54,6 @@ const (
 	reasonTraceTooLarge = "trace_too_large"
 	// reasonLiveTracesExceeded indicates that tempo is already tracking too many live traces in the ingesters for this user
 	reasonLiveTracesExceeded = "live_traces_exceeded"
-	// reasonInternalError indicates an unexpected error occurred processing these spans. analogous to a 500
-	reasonInternalError = "internal_error"
 	// reasonUnknown indicates a pushByte error at the ingester level not related to GRPC
 	reasonUnknown = "unknown_error"
 
@@ -443,7 +441,6 @@ func (d *Distributor) PushTraces(ctx context.Context, traces ptrace.Traces) (*te
 
 	keys, rebatchedTraces, truncatedAttributeCount, err := requestsByTraceID(batches, userID, spanCount, d.cfg.MaxSpanAttrByte)
 	if err != nil {
-		overrides.RecordDiscardedSpans(spanCount, reasonInternalError, userID)
 		logDiscardedResourceSpans(batches, userID, &d.cfg.LogDiscardedSpans, d.logger)
 		return nil, err
 	}
@@ -537,7 +534,6 @@ func (d *Distributor) sendToIngestersViaBytes(ctx context.Context, userID string
 	}, ring.DoBatchOptions{})
 	// if err != nil, we discarded everything because of an internal error (like "context cancelled")
 	if err != nil {
-		overrides.RecordDiscardedSpans(totalSpanCount, reasonInternalError, userID)
 		logDiscardedRebatchedSpans(traces, userID, &d.cfg.LogDiscardedSpans, d.logger)
 		return err
 	}