Discord is making public chats searchable on Google: How to opt out
Discord conversations on large public servers will soon reach audiences far beyond their communities, raising privacy concerns.
Discord is making a policy change that will make conversations from its largest public servers discoverable in search engines, including Google, raising privacy concerns among users whose conversations were previously confined to the platform.
The change applies to Discoverable Servers — communities with at least 1,000 members listed in Discord’s public directory that do not require an invitation to join.
From Nov. 16, every Discoverable Server will have a web page that may include summaries of public channel discussions. From mid-December, individual messages posted in eligible channels may appear in web search, Discord said Tuesday. Messages posted before the rollout will not be included, while usernames and avatars will be excluded from published messages.
Discord said the shift of online communities from message boards to its servers had made useful answers harder to find. “This has led to valuable information being locked in Discord conversations, inaccessible to the wider internet. We want to fix this,” the company said.
The move has drawn criticism from users concerned about their conversations reaching an audience outside of their intended community, even if the servers are public in the first place.