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Comment by hayleox | Hacker News Reader

"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?).

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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.

It says public. twice.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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