Tech brief Breaking

Discord Will Let Google Show Messages From Big Public Servers. How to Opt Out

By , Tech Cheat Codes Team

Published 6 min read

Illustration of chat bubbles floating out of a chat window toward a search bar, with a small switch turned off.
Image: Tech Cheat Codes
On this page · 3 sections
  1. How to turn it off
  2. If you run a Discoverable Server
  3. References

If you post in one of Discord's big public servers, a sentence you type this December could show up in a Google search a few weeks later. Discord announced the plan on Tuesday, and the off switch is already live.

It takes under a minute. Open Discord on a computer or in a web browser, go to User Settings > Data & Privacy, and turn off "Show my message content from Discoverable channels on web pages." That one switch covers every Discoverable Server you're in. The choice carries over to your phone, and it applies to your whole account rather than to one server at a time, so you only do it once.

If your Discord is a private server with a few friends, nothing changes for you. The change only touches "Discoverable Servers," the most public kind on Discord. To qualify, a server needs at least 1,000 members, has to be at least eight weeks old, and has to be listed in Server Discovery so that anyone can join without an invite link. Discord counts more than 63,000 of them. Private servers, direct messages and group chats are left out, and so are private threads and forums, along with any channel restricted to certain roles.

If you're in a Discoverable Server, the rollout comes in two steps. On November 16, every one of them gets its own public web page, and those pages can carry automated summaries of what people are talking about in active public channels. Then, from mid-December, individual messages from public channels can appear on those pages and in search results, word for word, though Discord is phasing that in gradually and the first messages from labeled channels may take a few weeks to show up after the mid-December start. For now, messages show as text only. They appear without a username or avatar.

A small test has already run. Pages for NBA 2K, Rust and Dead by Daylight have shown channel messages, though every post in that test came from a server admin or moderator rather than a regular member.

The default is where people get tripped up. In the US and most other places, your setting is on unless you turn it off. The setting starts off in the EU and EEA, the UK, Canada, Brazil, Australia and South Korea, where members have to opt in. Teen accounts are excluded entirely and can't turn the feature on.

How to turn it off

  1. Open Discord on a desktop computer or in a web browser. Those are the two places Discord lists for this setting.
  2. Go to User Settings, then Data & Privacy.
  3. Switch off "Show my message content from Discoverable channels on web pages."

Whether a message can appear online depends on your setting at the moment you send it. So turn it off before December. Do it before you post a pile of answers in a big gaming server, because messages sent while the switch is on stay eligible.

Turning it off is not a cleanup tool. Messages you sent while the switch was on can still appear on a server's web pages, even if they haven't yet. To keep one of those off the web, or to pull one that's already there, delete it in Discord. Deleting removes it from Discord and from Discord's web pages. Google and other search engines keep their own copies, though, and Discord doesn't control how long they hold on to them, so a deleted message may need a separate removal request to the search engine before it stops turning up.

One more catch. Your personal switch covers Channel Messages only. The automated Channel Summaries are generated separately, from broader channel topics, and they'll still appear on a server's page unless that server's admins turn them off. Summaries don't show usernames or avatars either.

If you run a Discoverable Server

Discord is rolling out admin controls gradually, starting Tuesday. Like the member setting, they work on desktop and in a browser only. Open Server Settings, then Community, then Web Presence, and know that only the server owner or someone with the Administrator permission can change anything there. Channel Summaries and Channel Messages have separate toggles and separate channel lists, both on by default, and you can switch either one off for the whole server or pick which public channels take part.

Act before November 16. A server that hasn't set up a web page gets a default one on that date, built from the server profile. Switching off both toggles stops new content from being generated, but it doesn't take down the page itself. To get rid of the page, you have to turn off Discoverability, which turns the server back into a regular Community Server.

To check whether a server you run is Discoverable, open Server Settings, then Access, then Discoverable. Members can tell which channels are in, too. Channels that take part carry an icon in the channel header, and a pop-up appears near the header before you post. It shows up again whenever a channel newly joins.

Discord's case for the change is that the long, useful answers people once found on message boards, like boss guides and build advice, now sit inside Discord where search can't see them. That's a fair complaint. A Google result that leads you into the right conversation is handy.

The pushback is about what a "public" channel feels like. Typing in a busy server feels like talking in a crowded room, and a search result is a different audience. Some users have also asked whether the messages could end up training AI systems. Discord's help page asks that exact question, "Are you selling my messages to AI companies?", and the answer is no, with nothing changed.

Discord hasn't given an exact December date for messages. The summaries and the new web pages start November 16.

References