Over the last decade, Discord has become the de facto community space for gaming, and there are a lot of huge servers out there that you can find by scrolling through its public servers page. But starting on November 16, some messages in these huge servers will be viewable from Google.
In a blog post, Discord laid out its plans to publish 'Server Web Pages' for every discoverable server on Discord by default. These are bespoke web pages that give a preview of a server's contents before forcing users to hit the join button. There are already several of these pages live, typically for huge online games like Rust or Dead by Daylight. These pages will be discoverable on Google, and will display a summary of the discussions going on in the server.
But while these 'Server Web Pages' will be going live next month, another update is coming in December, that'll allow answers to questions to appear in Google search. According to the blog post, "answers to questions your members sent in public channels can be found in a web search, in their own words. Server admins decide which channels take part, and server members can choose whether their own messages appear. Usernames and avatars will not be shown alongside these messages."
It's important to note that only large discoverable servers will be affected by these changes, meaning your World of Warcraft guild or friend group probably won't be affected in any way. Discoverable server admins can opt out their servers or even individual channels by going to Server Settings, then Web Presence and choosing which channels you want to be visible. But, if you don't change anything, public channels will have the setting enabled by default.
If you're just a user in one of these huge servers, and you don't want your messages to be viewable from Google, you can also opt your own messages out. Simply go to User Settings, then Data and Privacy and disable 'Show my message content from Discoverable channels on web pages.'
Discord is introducing this feature to help people find answers to questions. If you've Googled anything in the last couple of years, you've probably noticed that a lot of search results for questions will lead you to Reddit, or another similar message board. It seems like Discord wants a slice of that pie.
According to the blog, "prior to Discord's launch, message boards were common, ranging from community-driven forums to official ones run by game studios. These message boards excelled at hosting long-form, structured conversations about helping people, theory crafting, and more. While they still exist today, many have moved into Discord servers. This has led to valuable information being locked in Discord conversations, inaccessible to the wider internet. We want to fix this."
There will likely be some useful information that you'll be able to find when these changes go live in December, but there are definitely some privacy concerns, as well. So, if you don't want your messages in large discoverable servers to be seen by everyone, make sure to disable the feature today, before all the changes go live. So far, these changes will be exclusive to large public servers with more than 1,000 members, and hopefully it stays that way.