The lack of discovery is precisely why it's so popular, in my opinion. Communities have a much easier time gatekeeping so you avoid redditization and have a much greater sense of privacy.

> much greater sense of privacy.

This could have been the case, but Discord blocks me from making new accounts without a separate, expensive mobile phone number.

You can’t even join most servers without having a bot ping your name publicly. This name is then searchable by any user in that server by searching for “mentions:yourcurrentname#tag”. This applies even if you changed your username since then.

You also cannot turn off the ability for someone to see what mutual servers or mutual friends you have.

Any of the above issues would be manageable as a single issue, but when combined, Discord is the worst tool for privacy, bar none.

Privacy in the sense that zoomers' parents won't find their server.

There's always been endless third party websites, and I believe they added first-party discovery for public community servers a while ago. Community servers have been getting some serious features, too. They really are rapidly (and successfully) becoming something more like traditional social media.