Your Public Discord Messages May Soon Be Visible In Google Search - Here's Why

Discord may be a popular instant messaging and social platform, but it has come under fire lately due to a series of baffling decisions. In February, the company threatened to restrict your account unless you provided ID and facial scans, and now it wants to make some of your messages more public than ever, apparently to grow communities.

Recently, Discord announced that Discoverable Servers will include "Server Web Pages" starting November 16, which summarize the server. Anyone can search for these pages through Google (as well as lesser-known alternative browsers such as Opera). In the spirit of fairness, this change should only affect the most public of public Discord servers. These are servers with over 1,000 members, at least eight weeks old, and that meet various safety standards. But once someone finds the server they're looking for, they can easily join it and scroll through the discussions — including your additions to the discourse.

Let's say you are an active member of a public server for a new video game. Any messages you send after November 16 could show up on a Server Web Page, though your "public" identity (i.e., the username and avatar you use for the server) will initially remain secret. Server Web Pages can potentially include all the boss strategies, character build advice, and puzzle guides you post for the new game. But these pages can also include digital shouting matches you have with other server members, so be careful what you say.

As the Server Web Pages only provide summaries for Discoverable Servers, you don't need to worry about your private servers. Heck, private DMs are also exempt from the Google search functionality, and you can also change certain settings to protect your privacy on Discord. But what if you don't want Google to post your messages from public servers? You have some safeguards. They're limited, but they're available.

Technically speaking, if you are only a member of a Discoverable Server, there's little you can do about the Server Web Pages. Server admins can control which messages and channels show up in Google search summaries, and they can even block their servers from search results. You can prevent your messages from appearing in server summaries (the option is in the "Data and Privacy" tab of your "User Settings" page), but random people can still stumble on them if they visit the server via a Google search.

Depending on where you live, you don't need to worry about your latest Discord messages popping up on Google. Everything we've discussed so far applies to users in most countries who are 18 or older—people who set their age below that, as well as groups designed for teenagers, cannot appear in Server Web Pages. However, messages posted by users in the EU, UK, Canada, Brazil, Australia, and South Korea are exempt from the Google summaries unless they toggle the setting.