Discord is rolling out a policy change that will make conversations from its largest public servers discoverable through search engines, including Google — a shift that has raised privacy concerns among users whose discussions were previously confined to the platform.

The change covers Discoverable Servers: communities with at least 1,000 members that are listed in Discord's public directory and do not require an invitation to join.

According to Discord's announcement, every Discoverable Server will receive a web page beginning Nov. 16 that may include summaries of public channel discussions. From mid-December, individual messages posted in eligible channels may begin appearing in web search results, the company said Tuesday. Messages posted before the rollout will not be included, and usernames and avatars will be excluded from published messages. The published pages and indexed posts will sit on the open web, visible to anyone running a search rather than only to people with Discord accounts.

Discord framed the move as a response to the migration of online communities away from traditional message boards and onto its servers, which it said has 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 decision has drawn criticism from users worried that their conversations could reach an audience beyond the community they were intended for, even where servers are publicly accessible in the first place.

Others welcomed the change, arguing it could make useful answers easier to find. One user in Discord's announcement thread described the move as "very much necessary," while another said the migration of communities from forums to Discord had made their discussions harder to surface through search.

The policy could also affect cryptocurrency communities that rely on Discord for technical discussion, support and project announcements. Cointelegraph identified nearly 800 servers tagged "cryptocurrency," roughly 1,400 tagged "trading" and more than 700 tagged "finance" in Discord's public directory. Discord said there are more than 63,000 discoverable servers on the platform in total. How many of those communities keep their channels eligible for the open web is one detail to watch as the rollout proceeds.

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 on the open web. 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. For users elsewhere, the setting has to be switched off manually to keep message content off the web.

To opt out, users should open 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.

The feature can also be disabled after launch, though doing so only protects messages sent after the opt-out. Users who want an eligible message removed must delete it from Discord, and the company cautions that search engines may retain cached copies for some time.

Server administrators can separately prevent messages from individual channels or entire servers from appearing on public web pages and in search results via Server Settings > Web Presence. They can also disable discussion summaries, which are scheduled to begin rolling out in November. With summaries arriving in November and indexed messages following from mid-December, the staged schedule leaves a defined window for members and administrators to review these controls before posts become eligible.