Discord is letting search engines read public messages. Here’s what to do

In late October, Discord made a spooky announcement: It would begin allowing search engines to index its discoverable servers. In plain speak, conversations on these public servers will become findable by Google and other search providers.

Predictably, this reveal stoked fears about privacy on Discord. With all the furor over age verification, some people have interpreted the move as a further erosion of privacy.

But after reading Discord’s blog post more closely, I’m not worried… yet. Discoverable servers are meant to be found publicly, after all, and there’s potential good in exposing what’s being said on them. Forums have become less popular, and Reddit is continuing to turn away from search-driven traffic.

(Don’t know about you, but if someone figures out an obscure fix for a problem with a printer, I want to find it when I Google for a solution. I’m already going to be grumpy as heck.)

More importantly, Discord is allowing both users and server owners to opt out of the indexing. Assuming everything works as advertised, this approach is a surprisingly good balance between public discovery and privacy.

Here’s how to tweak those settings.