synapse-product/docs/user_directory.md

User Directory API Implementation

The user directory is currently maintained based on the 'visible' users on this particular server - i.e. ones which your account shares a room with, or who are present in a publicly viewable room present on the server.

The directory info is stored in various tables, which can (typically after DB corruption) get stale or out of sync. If this happens, for now the solution to fix it is to execute the SQL here https://github.com/matrix-org/synapse/blob/master/synapse/storage/schema/delta/53/user_dir_populate.sql and then restart synapse. This should then start a background task to flush the current tables and regenerate the directory.