Discord is changing its policy to make conversations from its largest public servers discoverable in search engines, including Google, the company said Tuesday. The move raises privacy concerns among users whose conversations were previously confined to the platform.
Scope of the change
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.
Messages posted before the rollout will not be included, while usernames and avatars will be excluded from published messages.
Rationale and reaction
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. Others welcomed the change, saying it could make useful answers easier to find. One user in Discord’s announcement thread called it “very much necessary,” while another said moving communities from forums to Discord had made their discussions harder to find through search.
The change could also affect cryptocurrency communities that use Discord for technical discussions, support and project announcements. Cointelegraph found nearly 800 servers tagged “cryptocurrency,” around 1,400 tagged “trading” and more than 700 tagged “finance” in Discord’s public directory. Discord said there are over 63,000 total discoverable servers on its platform.
How to opt out
Users have until the message-sharing rollout begins in mid-December to opt out before their posts become eligible to appear online. Discord said the feature will be disabled by default for users in Australia, the EU, the European Economic Area, the UK, Canada, Brazil and South Korea. Teen users will also be excluded.
To opt out, users should go into User Settings > Data & Privacy and switch off “Show my message content from Discoverable channels on web pages.” The setting covers every Discoverable Server a user belongs to, according to Discord’s guidance.
Users can also disable the feature after launch, but it only protects messages sent after the opt-out. Users who want an eligible message removed must delete it from Discord, and Discord warns that search engines may retain cached copies for some time.
Server administrators can also prevent messages from individual channels or entire servers from appearing on public web pages and in search results through Server Settings > Web Presence. They can separately disable discussion summaries, which are scheduled to begin rolling out in November.
