We called them servers because our early adopters were coming from Ventrillo and Teamspeak (eg: Vent server, Teamspeak server, etc) and we wanted to use familiar terminology.
I don't think it's intentionally misleading. Its roots are in gaming in which "server" is often the term used for an instance and no one misconstrues ownership in that context. Some games let you self-host a server, but it's increasingly rare. More commonly, you reserve/join an instance on the developer's servers and you tell your friend(s), "Come join my server". Whether that be a Minecraft Realm or a WoW shard.
Or they could just be adopting the terminology of TeamSpeak and the like.
I think it's more that gamers understand the concept of a "server" and not really anything to do with your evil theory.
They were originally called "guilds", and they are still called "guilds" in the Discord API.
This isn't true. They wanted a one-to-one language replacement for ventrilo/teamspeak/mumble.
"Hey hop on my mumble server"
"Hey hop on my vent server"
"Hey hop on my teamspeak server"
"Hey hop on my discord... guild?"
That’s because discord “servers” aren’t real servers and it’s all a whole big closed-source SaaS.
“Server” is a clearly an intentionally misleading term and dark UX used to lure people into thinking they are have actual ownership and control of their fealty SaaS workspaces.
Sadly, given the success of Discord, it seems this lie has paid off big-time though.