Discord Will Put Your Chats On Google Search Unless You Opt Out

Rich chat platform Discord is looking to open up its discoverable servers, which the company says are the “most public spaces on Discord,” to those using search engines. If that makes privacy alarm bells go off in the back of your head, don't panic; users and server administrators alike will have time to dive into the settings panel and tweak their privacy preferences before the company’s plans kick into gear next month.

Discoverable servers are naturally some of the largest communities on the platform, as one of the requirements to enable discoverability is that they must have at least 1,000 members. Many of these servers are centered around specific open-source projects, or communities formed in support of specific hobbies. These sorts of roles would have been filled by web-searchable forums in the past, and the move to Discord has been seen as a net loss for the Internet at large. Discord itself wants to fix that by getting closer to what discussion forums of yesteryear used to provide, making these servers accessible to the rest of the internet.

As part of this effort the company will be enabling "server web pages," which aim to “give people a glimpse of what a Discord community is about before they join,” for all discoverable servers. These pages will now include a small slice of conversations happening within the community, although usernames and profile pictures will not be included in these channel summaries.


Being part of a large community doesn’t necessarily mean you want your words blasted out to the wider internet, though. If that’s you, head on over to “user settings,” click or tap on “data & privacy” and look for “show my message content from discoverable channels on web pages.” By default, this toggle will be set to allow this, but just toggle it off to not be included, although if you're someone who engages in this kind of chat frequently, it's a bit of a shame to hide your helpful remarks from the web.

Obviously, server administrators can control this behavior, too. For starters, keep in mind that this simply doesn't apply to your server or its messages whatsoever if you haven't already enabled discoverability. If you want to keep Discoverability enabled but disable the server web page, you can head on over to your Server Settings and choose “Web Presence.” Look over this panel and see what options, such as channel summaries, you want to apply to your server. In case it needs stating, nobody's DMs will be appearing in web searches.

These changes will begin to be implemented beginning in November, with messages appearing in search engines in mid-December. If you want your anonymized Discord chats to stay off the searchable web, be sure to check your privacy settings before then.