ChatGPT chats were indexed then removed from search but still remain online
growtika.com
growtika.com
Like the button says "allow it to be shown in web searches". How can you misunderstand this?
Make this chat discoverable
Allows it to be shown in web searches
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
* 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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
>Make this chat discoverable (Allows it to be shown in web searches)
If you don't want that behavior, not checking it is advisable.
I'm no apologist for bad UI/UX; the tech industry is rife with it. I frequently mutter something like "how is the average person supposed to puzzle this out?" when I'm navigating insane flows on mainstream web apps.
But, I'm with the other commenters who say we can't dumb everything down into nothingness, if we want anything resembling progress. This doesn't just extend to technology.
"Make this chat discoverable (Allows it to be shown in web searches)" is not unambiguous. Many people - especially those with ASD, ADHD, or even just different mental models - interpret "web search" as internal search on the platform. That's a completely reasonable interpretation given how most websites work. Even the word "discoverable" sounds passive and controlled, not synonymous with "permanently indexed by Google."
UX isn't about spoon-feeding idiots. It's about reducing cognitive load and accommodating different cognitive styles. Good UI accounts for diverse interpretations and explains high-stakes actions with precision. This option failed that standard.
And your argument boils down to: "Well, it told you, technically." That’s not good enough. Legally, ethically, and practically, when an action has severe privacy implications, "technically correct" is a euphemism for design failure.
This isn't about dumbing things down. It's about not designing exclusively for people who think like you. If you exclude everyone who reads or processes information differently, you're not building tech for the public - you're just building for a clique.
Tell that to Venmo!
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.
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?).
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 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.
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.
Then again it does not specify what exactly public means.
This message was not created with neurodivergent people in mind.
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.
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.
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.
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.
UX 101 taught by George Carlin
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.
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-b4a32e1ab9... (essay)
- https://chatgpt.com/share/67712739-53ac-8012-a151-d2dddcc40f... (dad jokes with math)
- https://chatgpt.com/share/678f887f-03f0-800d-ae17-a550ec758f... (health)
The ones above don't have PII, but I was also finding job application shares that had full CV PII. Yikes!
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.
I was able to find a bunch of job application shares that had uploaded CVs with full PII. Names, phone #s, address etc. Yikes!
Dad jokes with math:
https://chatgpt.com/share/67712739-53ac-8012-a151-d2dddcc40f...
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.
At least this is how sharing features seem to work in SaaS.
Feels like a possible bug.
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.