27 votes

Discoverable servers on Discord will have summaries, public messages will be open for search indexing

Posted by moocow1452
Tags: privacy, social media, search engines, announcements, servers, messaging, indexing, features, author.kelsey duncombe smith, source.discord
https://discord.com/blog/making-content-from-discoverable-servers-easier-to-discover

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Title
Making Content from Discoverable Servers Easier to Discover
Authors
Kelsey Duncombe-Smith
Word count
1708 words

5 comments

  1. [2]
    stu2b50
    Link
    Surprisingly generous imo. People complained all the time about how knowledge moved from discoverable forums (and to a lesser extent, reddit), to discord servers which you have to join to read...

    Surprisingly generous imo. People complained all the time about how knowledge moved from discoverable forums (and to a lesser extent, reddit), to discord servers which you have to join to read (and aren't indexed by anything else). This makes the latter less of an issue.

    Nevertheless, yeah all text on public servers is going to be used for LLM training. It do be like that. But considering Discord could have just sold that information, letting it be public is not a financial move.

    24 votes
    1. adutchman
      Link Parent
      Right, this will expose a treasure trove of information to the public web. Still would like communities to adopt open source apps like Zulip, but this is nice nonetheless.

      Right, this will expose a treasure trove of information to the public web. Still would like communities to adopt open source apps like Zulip, but this is nice nonetheless.

      14 votes
  2. [2]
    LukeZaz
    Link
    EDIT: Important part up front for anyone who doesn't want this: I suppose I have another reason to consider deleting my Discord data. I have no promise these options will stick around, after all....

    EDIT: Important part up front for anyone who doesn't want this:

    Users have control over whether their messages are shown. If you'd rather your messages weren't shown, you can turn that off starting today in User Settings > Data and Privacy, before messages start rolling out in mid-December 2026 (or anytime after). One setting covers Channel Messages in every Discoverable Server. Channel Summaries are generated separately, from broader channel topics, and will still appear on Server Web Pages unless admins choose to turn them off. Usernames and avatars won't be shown alongside messages on Server Web Pages

    Server admins can opt channels out starting today, before anything goes live on November 16, 2026. Controls for admins are in Server Settings > Web Presence. You can choose which channels take part, or opt all channels out. If you don’t change anything, public channels stay on, and your Server Web Page goes live on November 16, 2026, if you don't already have one.

    I suppose I have another reason to consider deleting my Discord data. I have no promise these options will stick around, after all.

    I swear, IRC looks more and more appealing by the day. I didn't use it when I had it, but the days of "conversations are ephemeral and disappear quickly" are still ones I sorely miss now that privacy is such a back-burner issue at best. These days you're lucky if a company can be trusted to actually delete things when you tell them to.

    Not that everything was rosy previously, of course. I don't think PHPBB even had account deletion tools.

    8 votes
    1. creesch
      (edited )
      Link Parent
      Sort of, people use bouncers and back in the day many channels had public chatlogs. I always felt that this sentiment gave a false sense of privacy. Edit: To give a bit more context. As soon as it...

      IRC looks more and more appealing by the day. I didn't use it when I had it, but the days of "conversations are ephemeral and disappear quickly"

      Sort of, people use bouncers and back in the day many channels had public chatlogs. I always felt that this sentiment gave a false sense of privacy.

      Edit:
      To give a bit more context. As soon as it involves me interacting with other people online I assume one or more might be keeping logs for whatever reason. Which might sound paranoid but is in my experience very common as people do it for all sorts of reasons.

      2 votes
  3. Aldehyde
    Link
    While this is good, discord still isn’t a good replacement for forums, like people are unfortunately attempting. I regularly engage on Tildes, Reddit, and other forums, but I basically never on...

    While this is good, discord still isn’t a good replacement for forums, like people are unfortunately attempting.

    I regularly engage on Tildes, Reddit, and other forums, but I basically never on Discord - you can’t really beat the threaded comment system, each topic is properly segregated (ig there are threads on discord, but it’s really not the same)

    1 vote