[HN Gopher] ChatGPT chats were indexed then removed from search ...
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ChatGPT chats were indexed then removed from search but still
remain online
Author : Growtika
Score : 74 points
Date : 2025-08-03 18:53 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (growtika.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (growtika.com)
| Sweepi wrote:
| Not that I dislike criticizing OpenAI, but this seems to be a
| case of "your users are way dummer than you thought".
|
| Like the button says "allow it to be shown in web searches". How
| can you misunderstand this?
| simonw wrote:
| Here's the copy they used on that checkbox:
| Make this chat discoverable Allows it to be shown in web
| searches
|
| "Discoverable" is insider jargon.
|
| What does "web search" mean? Is that about whether I should be
| able to search for my chats in the app in the future?
|
| That language may seem obvious to those of us with a deep level
| of technical literacy - the denizens of Hacker News for example
| - but ChatGPT has over a billion users now.
|
| Try asking the less technical people in your life to describe
| the difference between a web site and an app, or what a URL is,
| or get them to describe what "web search" means and name some
| products in that category. You may be unpleasantly surprised.
|
| Meta AI gave people a "share" option with several levels of
| click though required to share a post and it was a fiasco:
| https://futurism.com/meta-ai-embarassing
| ronsor wrote:
| This is somewhat true, but we can't redefine every phrase
| from first principles whenever we use it. Web search has been
| a thing for decades now. People will simply have to _learn_
| things; we can 't cater to an indefinite amount of ignorance.
| jadamson wrote:
| The word "public" is already used for this just about
| everywhere else.
| saurik wrote:
| FWIW, if it is "public", I'd think it would merely be
| something anyone could access _if they already knew where
| it was_ , a concept that people experience often with
| "public" share URLs from numerous services; being
| "discoverable" is much stronger, as it tells us that
| random people are going to be able to search and, well,
| discover it.
| ronsor wrote:
| I mean, this isn't consistent with the usual definition
| of public, especially on sites that let you share
| content:
|
| * YouTube uses "public" for viewable by everyone and
| discoverable; for something that should only be
| accessible if the URL is shared, then YouTube uses the
| term "unlisted"
|
| * Facebook uses "public" similarly
|
| More generally, "to publish" (related to the adjective
| "public") means to make something generally known, as
| opposed to simply sharing with a closed group (even if
| they can share it too).
| aniviacat wrote:
| I'd like to add that the web search button in the ChatGPT
| interface is labled "Web search". And even when it starts
| searching on its own, it displays "searching the web...".
| simonw wrote:
| When you have a billion users I would argue that you do
| need to cater to an indefinite amount of ignorance, where
| "ignorance" here means wildly varying levels of technical
| experience.
| ronsor wrote:
| I agree with catering to your target audience in theory;
| however, at that scale, you're going to have people screw
| up anyway, no matter how many explanations, warnings, or
| prompts you add.
|
| I've shipped software which could be installed by
| clicking "Yes" twice, and somehow a non-negligible amount
| of people are still puzzled by the setup process. It's
| tiring.
| varispeed wrote:
| > and somehow a non-negligible amount of people are still
| puzzled by the setup process. It's tiring.
|
| Probably the process wasn't researched enough. You can do
| focus groups with customers or even hire members of the
| public for a discovery session and see how accessible
| process is and then refine. Technical teams are often
| severely biased and what they think should be easy and
| natural might be quite the opposite to other people who
| are not deeply involved with the domain.
| ronsor wrote:
| The vast majority of users have had no problem.
|
| The installer consists of a "Yes (to accepting the
| license agreement)", waiting on a progress bar, and a
| "Yes (to starting the program)." It is like almost every
| installation wizard ever seen on a computer, except
| simpler and no bundled adware.
|
| When I've asked the ~5-10% of people who are confused,
| they've done at least one of the following:
|
| * Admit they clicked at random, and somehow closed the
| installer.
|
| * Gave up immediately and exited.
|
| * Complained there was no video tutorial for a sixty-
| second process.
|
| This kind of stuff has me at a loss for words, and
| overall, it makes me more jaded when producing software
| for the "average" end-user. There's only so much magic I
| can put in, and I already do a lot of work to make sure
| most stuff I make is as user-friendly as possible. Plenty
| of people don't actually _read_ explanations, even a few
| words; you can 't really help them at that point.
| varispeed wrote:
| > Admit they clicked at random, and somehow closed the
| installer. > Gave up immediately and exited.
|
| Seems like someone with ADHD.
|
| > Complained there was no video tutorial for a sixty-
| second process.
|
| Could be someone with Dyspraxia.
|
| These behaviours might be puzzling to neurotypical
| people, but they exist and are reality for many users.
| It's also not connected to that person intelligence in
| any way. Their brains just operate differently.
| ronsor wrote:
| > Seems like someone with ADHD.
|
| Perhaps it does, but it begs the question of "how did
| they operate the computer at all?" These same people seem
| to have no trouble accomplishing other tasks they want to
| do on the computer--tasks which require more focus.
|
| > Could be someone with Dyspraxia.
|
| Fair.
|
| In any case, as only one person developing a program for
| free in my spare time, I don't have the time or ability
| to cater for every scenario.
| varispeed wrote:
| > These same people seem to have no trouble accomplishing
| other tasks they want to do on the computer--tasks which
| require more focus.
|
| That's common. ADHD has this kind of paradoxes. People
| can hyperfocus on tasks that align with interests or feel
| stimulating and become completely overwhelmed by other
| tasks, even seemingly simple.
|
| > I don't have the time or ability to cater for every
| scenario.
|
| That's fair, but still it's at least worth being mindful
| about accessibility issues some people face. For big
| corporations this is inexcusable.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Some people are just incompetent. Easiest thing is to
| write them off as customers: they will be an outsize
| source of pain. If they can't manage an installer that
| simple, how will they ever _use_ the software?
| foxglacier wrote:
| For some reason desktop installers are weirdly
| complicated. Why are there two yes buttons instead of one
| or none? Maybe you have to accept the OS's warning dialog
| but perhaps installers should just work without any
| interaction. You can always uninstall if you ran it by
| mistake.
| varispeed wrote:
| ChatGPT is a website. "Web search" can literally mean that
| person will be able to find their chat through the search
| on the website and might assume it will not be available
| for everyone to see (because in their mind that would be
| too insane to be true).
|
| You can also take into account people who are literate but
| are neurodivergent. This options was too ambiguous and
| should have contained more context explaining what "Web
| search" actually means. You would still get people
| misunderstanding it.
|
| To me this looks like someone from marketing thought it
| would be cool to have conversations discoverable through
| search to "boost" awareness of the service, but in my
| opinion that is incredibly dumb and it is bizarre that
| nobody said "hang on a minute, isn't this stupid?" and it's
| gotten all the way to production.
| mh- wrote:
| You've omitted that the user found themselves in this
| flow by consciously clicking a button that says _Share_.
| Eisenstein wrote:
| Why is no one asking what purpose is served by indexing
| ChatGPT conversations? Why is this necessary? There is no
| option on your bank's website to 'make your finances
| discoverable' or your health insurance website to 'make
| your medical records discoverable'. It is not a matter of
| making it easier for people to understand what it is doing,
| it is a matter of thinking 'what could go wrong' and then
| determining if it is worth the risk to expose the option to
| do it.
| simonw wrote:
| "There is no option on your bank's website to 'make your
| finances discoverable'"
|
| Tell that to Venmo!
| babyshake wrote:
| Is the only/main use-case for this being that you are trying
| to do some type of SEO or marketing? Why else would you
| intentionally want your chats to shown in web searches?
|
| It does seem like this UI should be updated with an extra
| confirmation step warning you that your chat will be public
| and this should be thought of as a permanent decision as
| anything made public on the web long enough to be indexed is
| public forever.
| Kim_Bruning wrote:
| If you publish something on the web, the traditional
| expectation is that it shows up in web searches.
| oxguy3 wrote:
| "Discoverable", I agree with you on; that should have been
| "public". And there probably should have been an "are you
| sure?" pop-up the first time you do this, explaining in a
| little bit more depth.
|
| But "web searches" seems like a pretty straightforward term.
| Even if you think it means ChatGPT's built-in search, that
| would still imply that other ChatGPT users could find it.
| "Allow", I feel, is a pretty strong word that implies someone
| else is getting access (because why would I need to give
| myself permission for something?).
| justinsaccount wrote:
| It says public. twice.
| simonw wrote:
| Here's the full text from that dialog:
| Public link created A public link to your
| chat has been created. Manage previously
| shared chats at any time via Settings. [
| ] Make this chat discoverable Allows it to be
| shown in web searches
| https://chatgpt.com/share/ [ Copy link ]
|
| The use of the word "public" here is completely separate
| from the checkbox about making it discoverable.
|
| The whole point of this feature is to provide you with a
| URL you can share with someone to let you see the
| conversation.
|
| The issue of whether or not that should be included in
| public search indexes is _incredibly technically dense_.
| You have to understand what a search engine is, and that
| content can be deliberately excluded from search. If you
| know what a robots.txt file is that 's easy, but most
| people have zero understanding of how search engines
| actually work.
| Kim_Bruning wrote:
| I suppose you have a point?
|
| Though this seems like a bit of a problem now that it's
| 2025.
|
| Seems like (it should be) basic civic knowledge that
| things you publish in public can be read by everyone.
|
| These days, publishing to web is the biggest "in public
| of all"... you can get potentially get more eyeballs than
| the front page of the New York Times, or if you put it up
| in lights on times square.
|
| Despite not being the biggest fan, I'm not sure that this
| is an OpenAI problem per-se. They offer the option of
| sharing your stuff in public, people use the option. The
| consequences should be common sense.
|
| You'd hope, at least.
| varispeed wrote:
| This is ambiguous. It says that the link is public, not
| that the content is public.
|
| Then again it does not specify what exactly public means.
|
| This message was not created with neurodivergent people
| in mind.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Better than "allows it to be shown" would be "allows
| anyone to find it in web searches" but some people don't
| read details so that would only help so much.
| simonw wrote:
| The other factor to consider here is that users may have
| been trained to click any checkbox that appears when they
| are trying to achieve a goal.
|
| Here you have users trying to share something. A blank
| checkbox shows up, maybe that's something you have to check
| for the feature to work?
|
| People generally don't read the labels on form elements,
| even if they're just a dozen words long.
| DonHopkins wrote:
| "Make this chat discoverable"
|
| Much worse: "Discoverable" is legal jargon too.
|
| As if it wasn't already legally discoverable in a lawsuit.
| They're implicitly promising that you have some kind of
| client-llm privacy privilege if you don't check that.
| johnfn wrote:
| This is after a user has clicked "Share", read a modal that
| says "This chat may contain private information" and then
| clicked "Create link".
| grodriguez100 wrote:
| I don't think "web searches" requires "a deep level of
| technical literacy"...
| AlienRobot wrote:
| Is there a legal reason for not writing "Let other people see
| your chats when searching on Google"
| knowsuchagency wrote:
| Suggested alternative: "Public see chat. Public find chat. No
| privacy. All will see!"
| deepsun wrote:
| I agree in particular, but disagree in general. I prefer to
| live in the world when everything assumes people are just a
| little less ignorant than they really are. Kind of "aim
| higher". Otherwise everything becomes "aim lower", and we
| cannot have nice things.
|
| I particular I agree OpenAI should have a better UX, but also
| I want to expect people to actually learn what a "URL" is if
| we want to live in the future. They might just go and learn.
| karmakaze wrote:
| Why are we 'lawyering' this instead of saying how they
| could/should improve it? All it needs is a small affordance:
| hover to get a clearer, longer description or something to
| that effect.
| simonw wrote:
| I think ditching the feature was the right move for them.
|
| I'm not sure you could fix this with copy - we all know
| that users don't read anything.
|
| The audience of people who genuinely do want their shared
| chats to _also_ be indexed by Google is likely absolutely
| tiny. The audience of people who find such an option
| confusing and are likely to turn it on without
| understanding the consequences is proven to be pretty huge
| already.
| ronsor wrote:
| The number one rule of software is that no matter how clear you
| make something, users will still screw up and blame you. Then
| other similarly ignorant people will agree with them.
| gundmc wrote:
| This rings true. I feel this way about the incognito
| "tracking" lawsuit as well.
| simonw wrote:
| ... or people will agree with them who aren't "ignorant", but
| have spent enough time in the usability trenches to empathize
| with how they could have made that mistake.
| aresant wrote:
| "Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of
| them are stupider than that."
|
| UX 101 taught by George Carlin
| j45 wrote:
| Not sure why the links wouldn't be 404ing?
| thephyber wrote:
| Why would they?
|
| This article applies to the subset of ChatGPT chats which were
| shared and opted into to make them visible to web crawlers.
| 404ing these chats would break the feature.
|
| The problem is simply accurately messaging to the user who is
| opting to share it.
| easton wrote:
| Feels like they could just change the URL to the chat when
| you disable the discoverable thing. Guess that'd break links
| you explicitly shared, but who's going and referencing
| someone else's ChatGPT search so often they can't take a
| updated link?
| j45 wrote:
| When you turn off the sharing, the links should dissapear.
|
| At least this is how sharing features seem to work in SaaS.
|
| Feels like a possible bug.
| simple10 wrote:
| DuckDuckGo still has a lot of the share links indexed.
|
| The file upload ones are particularly interesting. Lots of
| financial and market analysis stuff like this one:
| https://chatgpt.com/share/68805b2d-0bf0-8007-b325-b06160356c...
| (no PII in the chat)
|
| Looks like Google and Archive.org removed the share URLs.
| _def wrote:
| "inurl:https://chatgpt.com/share/" does not find any links on
| duckduckgo for me
| afro88 wrote:
| The filter is actually "site:", but yes, no links indexed on
| DDG
| simple10 wrote:
| Really? I'm still seeing results on DDG.
|
| https://duckduckgo.com/?q=site%3Ahttps%3A%2F%2Fchatgpt.com%
| 2...
|
| Maybe it's a region or cache issue while DDG is actively
| remove them?
|
| Some random shares:
|
| - https://chatgpt.com/share/67d0b32e-3ff0-800a-b1a9-b4a32e1
| ab9... (essay)
|
| - https://chatgpt.com/share/67712739-53ac-8012-a151-d2dddcc
| 40f... (dad jokes with math)
|
| - https://chatgpt.com/share/678f887f-03f0-800d-ae17-a550ec7
| 58f... (health)
|
| The ones above don't have PII, but I was also finding job
| application shares that had full CV PII. Yikes!
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Yet another example of why you should assume that anything you
| type into a web form will become public either deliberately or
| accidentally.
| fardo wrote:
| This feels like it should be a non-controversy.
|
| Even being uncharitable, a big off-by-default checkbox saying
| "make this discoverable in web searches" is roughly as explicit
| as you can possibly make this feature textually, assuming your
| users will be applying any reading comprehension.
|
| If they're not, no further warnings were going to save them, so
| short of removing the feature or gating it behind increasingly
| elaborate "if only you knew better!" emails or pop-up modals they
| also presumably would not be reading, this was the likely
| outcome.
|
| At some point, I don't feel bad saying this is a user-side
| PEBKAC, and that more alerting would be a waste of time.
| _cs2017_ wrote:
| The article says that after the fix, the "discoverable" option
| sets nofollow/noindex. If so, how are discoverable chats
| different from non-discoverable now?
| ufko_org wrote:
| What does this have to do with AI? If you're an idiot who can't
| read and doesn't understand that a shared chat will be publicly
| accessible, then nothing is going to help you.
| busymom0 wrote:
| I think this is more of a UI/UX issue than AI issue.
| quitit wrote:
| Basically nothing: The angle being taken here seems to be that
| private or secret information was leaking out onto the web like
| a security flaw.
|
| However that's clearly not the case as the user was already
| making the active choice of sharing those secrets or private
| information with another person. A person who: could copy or
| screenshot the information, or provide the link to another.
|
| So the situation at hand is that the user was already willing
| to take on some risk to divulge that information.
|
| This weighs against the arguments that "it's bad UX" and "maybe
| they don't understand what discoverable or web search means". -
| Both of which were already flimsy since "Discoverable" is basic
| comprehension, and we passed the bar for "web search" by
| knowing what ChatGPT is and how to use it.
|
| There is a line where we need to allow the individual the
| freedom to have agency over their actions and the
| responsibility of the consequences of those actions.
| simple10 wrote:
| This is a pretty huge PII leak.
|
| I was able to find a bunch of job application shares that had
| uploaded CVs with full PII. Names, phone #s, address etc. Yikes!
| simple10 wrote:
| For non-PII shares, here's one that feels tailor made for HN.
|
| Dad jokes with math:
|
| https://chatgpt.com/share/67712739-53ac-8012-a151-d2dddcc40f...
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(page generated 2025-08-03 23:01 UTC)