Finding good Discord servers relevant to your interests can be tough unless you sift through Discord’s own database or get an invite to one.
The popular messaging and chat service is looking to solve that problem with an obvious yet big change to the platform. Discord will now make public servers discoverable through Google Search.
On Tuesday, Discord announced that starting Nov. 16, 2026, all Discoverable Servers will receive a Server Web Page. These public Server Web Pages will include summaries of discussions happening in that public server. In addition, starting in mid-December, some messages within these servers will be made publicly accessible on the Server Web Page. There will be no need for visitors to join the server or even have a Discord account in order to see these messages.
So discord is becoming more and more like a forum replacement? This feels like the same direction they’ve already been going in with more server and community features. It is also being used more and more as a forum but without a lot of the features that make forums good, like them usually being open, while discord isnt, or wasnt. This just makes me wonder what discord is trying to be… a private chatroom like it started out as or some kind of forum like reddit?
Hopefully this mission confusion makes people look for alternatives.
Weren’t they always supposed to be a forum replacement? Like an extremely poorly organized, difficult to search, and generally messy forum replacement?
Maybe. To me, back in 2016, it was simply a Skype replacement so for me it was just a chatroom. But yeah you’re right that the servers were always a bit forum like at least in comparison to group chats.