Discord is making public chats searchable on Google: How to opt out

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.

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.