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Technology@lemmy.worldbybeep@piefed.world
12 days

Discord will soon let anyone find public server messages through Google

discord.com English

cross-posted from: https://piefed.world/c/tech/p/1495887/discord-will-soon-let-anyone-find-public-server-messages-through-google

39
    Making Content from Discoverable Servers Easier to Discover
    discord.com
    Starting on November 16, 2026, conversations in Discoverable Servers will be easier to find for people searching the web. Admins can choose which channels are surfaced on the web. Private servers, DMs, and GDMs are not included.
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    • VibeSurgeon@piefed.socialEnglish
      12 days

      To be clear, this is really good - so much information has moved from being accessible on the open internet in the form of public forums, to being inaccessible in the form of public discord servers. This brings back that lost information.

        • new_world_odor@lemmy.worldEnglish
          11 days

          Seriously, the amount of times the only avenue to access information has been an expired invite link is ridiculous. Anyone who doesn’t want their privacy violated should’ve got out of discord much sooner, the writing has been on the wall for years. Besides, plenty of the shit that’s currently functionally private should actually be public.

            • VibeSurgeon@piefed.socialEnglish
              11 days

              I don’t think there’s even an expectation of privacy to be had on a public discord, in open channels. Closed channels are presumably not indexed.

                • Ithi@lemmy.caEnglish
                  11 days

                  From what I’ve read it is channels that the discord server owner/admins have flagged as discoverable and then users themselves have a setting to still hide their messages.

                  This setting seems to be defaults to hide unless you are in the USA and then it defaults to show.

              • Natanael@infosec.pubEnglish
                11 days

                The problem is as usual that they violate everybody’s expectations as they make the change…

                • artyom@piefed.socialEnglish
                  11 days

                  It will be searchable but still inaccessible.

                • eleijeep@piefed.socialEnglish
                  12 days

                  You can bet they’re selling it to AI companies for training, too.

                    • CosmoNova@lemmy.worldEnglish
                      12 days

                      They‘re Discord. They‘re selling all their data in basically real time to anyone who wants it. If there‘s a Discord user someone wants to know more about they can just pay like 5 bucks to a service and get their entire chat history. That stuff is automated.

                      • Bluegrass_Addict@lemmy.caEnglish
                        12 days

                        they are trying to fill the reddit void for search ability and usability. they will reneg and disable it over profit somewhere

                        • Tollana1234567@lemmy.todayEnglish
                          12 days

                          google needed to find a new site to scrape after thier fall out with spez.

                          • abc@suppo.fiEnglish
                            12 days

                            What else could their product be?

                            • iamthetot@piefed.caEnglish
                              11 days

                              Discord is owned by Microsoft, a huge proponent of AI. So, yeah.

                              Edited to add, I was mistaken! Discord turned down Microsoft’s buyout.

                                • VibeSurgeon@piefed.socialEnglish
                                  12 days

                                  This is false, Microsoft does not own Discord

                                    • iamthetot@piefed.caEnglish
                                      11 days

                                      Oh shit, did that buy out not happen? I don’t know how I missed that, thanks for the info!

                                • Zagorath@quokk.auEnglish
                                  12 days

                                  Wow this is actually great. Still doesn’t excuse groups using Discord instead of traditional forums, because traditional forums are still browsable without an account. But the lack of indexing has been such a huge flaw with public groups using Discord. Addressing that issue goes a long way to making Discord a less shit platform for open source apps, games, etc. to run their support from.

                                    • XiJinpingStanAccount@lemmy.mlEnglish
                                      12 days

                                      I’m confused how this will work tho. If I click on a search result that goes to discord will it take me to somewhere I can see it? I don’t have a discord account. If it going to just take you to a login screen? I can’t click reddit results anymore since they block VPN traffic without an account. So it seems like search results are just becoming less useful.

                                        • Zagorath@quokk.auEnglish
                                          11 days

                                          If I click on a search result that goes to discord will it take me to somewhere I can see it?

                                          I assume not, which is why I still think this is worse than using normal forums. You’ll probably get a link to join the relevant server, and will probably require a Discord account to do it.

                                          Which is very annoying and unfortunate, but is a huge step up from all that content being entirely undiscoverable.

                                          It’s possible that someone could write a bot that displays a mirror more exactly. Not sure how easy it’ll be to both do that and not get taken down, though.

                                            • XiJinpingStanAccount@lemmy.mlEnglish
                                              11 days

                                              I mean for me personally this is worse because I will not make a discord account so the content is still unusable but now my search results are full of detritus.

                                                • Zagorath@quokk.auEnglish
                                                  11 days

                                                  I think you can tell most search engines to remove results from one particular source? So it should end up the same for you? If you can’t do it natively, there are definitely extensions that’ll do that.

                                              • artyom@piefed.socialEnglish
                                                11 days

                                                it seems like search results are the internet is just becoming less useful.

                                                FTFY

                                            • theneverfox@pawb.socialEnglish
                                              12 days

                                              As much as I would normally hate something like this, the way so many projects are based on discord (and how unsearchable discord messages are) make this really convenient

                                              Probably the worst solution, but maybe it’ll also get people off discord?

                                                • artyom@piefed.socialEnglish
                                                  11 days

                                                  maybe it’ll also get people off discord?

                                                  Quite the contrary, because it’s 1 less complaint about it.

                                                • Tollana1234567@lemmy.todayEnglish
                                                  12 days

                                                  google couldnt rely on reddit to scrape AI data, because its been taken over by said AI slop. google needed a new source of datamining. thats why reddit is becoming increasingly aggressive into forcing logins.

                                                  • AppleMango@lemmy.worldEnglish
                                                    12 days

                                                    Now lemmy servers need to do the same.

                                                    Maybe some do, but they never show up in search queries whenever I tried. I even filtered by sites.

                                                      • QuadratureSurfer@piefed.socialEnglish
                                                        11 days

                                                        I see Lemmy/Piefed results through DuckDuckGo.

                                                          • AppleMango@lemmy.worldEnglish
                                                            11 days

                                                            I’m using DuckDuckGo too, which server are you seeing on the results? I’ll try to filter specifically for that in the future.

                                                              • QuadratureSurfer@piefed.socialEnglish
                                                                11 days

                                                                PieFed.social, but I’ve occasionally seen some lemmy.world ones as well.

                                                                For example, just try searching for: “starcitizen steamdeck guide”

                                                                And third result currently goes to PieFed (a PieFed.social account posting to a Lemmy.world community).

                                                            • miadidi@lemmy.worldEnglish
                                                              12 days

                                                              A lot of lemmy servers have Human Verification in front of them maybe that’s why?

                                                                • AppleMango@lemmy.worldEnglish
                                                                  11 days

                                                                  Could whitelist specific search engine crawlers

                                                                    • diaphragmwp@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
                                                                      11 days

                                                                      The bots will pretend to be search engine crawlers. And not all have their own IP ranges.

                                                                        • Sharks@pawb.socialEnglish
                                                                          11 days

                                                                          You can’t impersonate search engine crawlers, because the server can verify that it’s really a search engine crawler

                                                                          See this from google: https://developers.google.com/crawling/docs/crawlers-fetchers/verify-google-requests

                                                                          Here, duckduckgo: https://duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-pages/results/duckduckbot

                                                                          • AppleMango@lemmy.worldEnglish
                                                                            11 days

                                                                            A lot of article websites whitelist Google’s crawler, right? Can’t that be done on a domain-basis? Or maybe have some kind of authentication-based system 🤔, I guess that would require the crawlers to be refactored though

                                                                    • Djehngo@lemmy.worldEnglish
                                                                      11 days

                                                                      Unpopular opinion: discord being inacessible from the web is a feature not a bug and I hope this is opt in on a per server basis.

                                                                      The fact that you can’t read the posts from a discord community without joining the server and there is no cross-server “all” or “front-page” means you have to decide to join and decide to in that moment look at that server, so you wind up with more focused communities around specific interests.

                                                                      No raiding from other platforms because no direct links, no product placement since few people will see it, no content creators posting clickbait slop trying to go viral etc. etc.

                                                                      I’m not going to pretend discord is perfect, but I have had better conversations there than any other social media platform

                                                                      • tio_bira@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
                                                                        11 days

                                                                        So, they just gonna use the discord messages as fuel for train AI…

                                                                          • Feathercrown@lemmy.worldEnglish
                                                                            11 days

                                                                            They could already do that though

                                                                          • dogslayeggs@lemmy.worldEnglish
                                                                            12 days

                                                                            What about past comments on a server that was public before this change came into place? I have no idea if any of the servers I commented on roughly 6 years ago were public. They were free servers for people playing WoW, and some had passwords and some didn’t. I didn’t make any controversial comments, but I also didn’t (knowingly) consent to anything I typed being publicly searchable.

                                                                            • bss03@infosec.pubEnglish
                                                                              11 days

                                                                              If there’s no choice in this, it is bad. If “servers” are allowed to opt-in, and users are interrupted with a warning before posting on a “server” that has changed the setting, it’s possibly good.

                                                                              I know Discord messages have never been secure, but that doesn’t mean it hasn’t been a place people treated as private. Suddenly making messages accessible is like replacing all the bathroom stall dividers with transparent partitions: never was secure from a real threat, but there was a heightened expectation of privacy.

                                                                              There are a lot of fandoms and communities and support groups with the intent to be public and having those indexed by your favorite search index will bring value, just like public web fora of the past and reddit (even ex-Twitter) before extreme monetization and slopification. But, changing any shared information or thoughts from inaccessible to accessible is virtually guaranteed to cause harm via unwanted disclosure and those harm could be irreparable and impossible to balance with the benefits of accessibility.

                                                                              This news is mixed, with a side of anxiety. I’m not really sure what’s going to show up in my Discord history.

                                                                              • [object Object]@lemmy.caEnglish
                                                                                12 days

                                                                                Oh fuck

                                                                                • Kairos@lemmy.todayEnglish
                                                                                  11 days

                                                                                  Yayyy!! More search result pollution!

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