Discord to let search engines index public server messages

Discord will soon allow search engines to index discussions held in its Discoverable Servers, making conversations accessible on the open web to people without an account or invitation to the platform. The company says the goal is to surface useful information to the wider internet community rather than leave it buried within Discord conversations. "Discussions in Discoverable Servers will soon be easier to find when you search the web, so you can find the answer you're looking for and step straight into the conversation on Discord," the messaging platform explained. The change applies only to Discoverable Servers, which are publicly listed communities with at least 1,000 members. Discord says it hosts approximately 63,000 servers that meet this criteria. Private servers, direct messages between users, and announcements on servers that do not meet the requirements are excluded from the scheme. According to the company's schedule, the rollout will happen in two stages. Server Web Pages will be created automatically on November 16 if administrators have not created them by then, and the only way to avoid them is to switch the server type to private before the cutoff date. Discord has been piloting Community Messages and Server Web Pages with the NBA 2K, Rust, and Dead by Daylight gaming communities ahead of the wider launch. A second rollout phase in December will be gradual, and Discord says messages posted before the release date in each community will be excluded from indexing. Both administrators and individual members retain control over what is shared. Channel administrators can exclude individual channels or turn off content sharing entirely using controls under Server Settings > Web Presence. Community members can prevent their own messages from appearing on Server Web Pages through User Settings > Data and Privacy, though that setting affects only future messages, and past messages that have already become public cannot be retracted. If administrators and users leave the settings at their defaults, their content will automatically be included in the new sharing arrangement. However, message sharing will remain off by default in all EU countries, the UK, Canada, Brazil, Australia, and South Korea. In those regions, members must explicitly enable the feature in their privacy settings. Underage users are automatically excluded and cannot activate the feature until they turn 18.