I can see why it's tempting to believe that this is intentionally abusive behavior from Discord higher ups, even though I know the reality is that they just don't care.
I can kind of understand wanting to think this, but it's not a helpful point of view to espouse. Given >99% of discord's userbase just uses it to casually interact with their friends, even their grandma, for maybe an hour a day at most. It's not productive to tell someone "you're using that dang pedophile app" when they're just using it to tell grammy about their day or send them something they drew, or use it for voice chat for their friends in fortnite.
Bad actors are present everywhere, as you stated in the OP, and have always been there. But now they're more visible, and sloppier operators have more ways to get caught. There are more paths for vulnerable people - not just children! - to be exposed to predators, but "discord bad" isn't a solution, unless you're willing to cut yourself or whoever you're trying to protect off from primary communications hubs related to a wide variety of hobbies and interests.
There's a rampant "x bad, kill x" attitude among certain people that doesn't do anything to address the systematic issues that allow predators to remain in power - whatever that scale of power may be. Whether they're a discord moderator, a priest, a movie director, a teacher, a sports team instructor, a scout leader... Whatever the case may be. You're not just going to be *safe* because you don't use discord... So when conversation revolves around specific applications being le bad, it pisses me off. Limiting access to applications for certain people, again, not just children, can reduce harm. Smart filters like what you've created can reduce harm. Conversations with people who you are concerned may be victims of abuse can reduce harm. Le discord bad is a flippant attitude adjacent to those types of parents who give their children free reign over the internet with no guidance whatsoever on how to behave there.
Which leads into the other issue of victims primarily being unparented children, in which case they aren't going to stop using discord. Nobody is going to make them do that. The onus is on discord to moderate their own services to a suitable degree if they wish to legally allow minors access to their platform... But that's every platform. People have been victimized through twitter, facebook, my space, tumblr, roblox, minecraft, discord, steam, xbox live, email, text, whatsapp, snapchat... Etc. You can make the argument that the structure of discord incentivizes a relatively large amount of vulnerable behavior, which is valid, but not the application's fault - except through their failure to implement completely feasible automated moderation.
This is getting rambly, but I think it's really important to recognize that you can't expect people to be free from victimization even if they avoid whatever platform you think is bad. There are people out there claiming that if they have kids, or with their currently infant children, that they won't be allowed access to the internet at all, or like, just be allowed to access wikipedia or whatever... And I hope they have nepotistic connections to get those children manual labor jobs if they ever follow through on those claims. You are setting your children up for failure if you cannot employ them in a technology-free environment yourself. You are setting them up for social failure unless you live in an enclave of people similarly technophobic. You are setting them up to rebel and seek use of technology through avenues not controlled by you if you live anywhere normal. And they're going to be even more vulnerable than they would have been otherwise under those circumstances, as they are already engaging in the taboo of disobeying their parents, and their access to such devices or services may be modified or withheld pending bribe-type behavior from their so-called "friends".
So what I'm saying is, acting like this feels adjacent to the non-parenting type of behavior that perpetuates this abuse in the first place. You need to talk to your children about how people may abuse them. As a homeschooled Catholic, the limit of my sexual knowledge until I was like, 14, and discovered it myself on the internet, was that God randomly gave babies to women via lottery and that my pernus felt funny when I saw big boobies, and unironically wondered if my wife would ever let me see her naked. If there'd been any bad actors in my life I could've been groomed so hard. And if I'd gotten anything in exchange, I probably would have found it pretty hard to reveal them, depending on the exact situation. I dunno how you explain to your child to avoid getting raped irl or on the internet if you want to avoid talking about sex with them entirely. I don't have all the answers, but I have a whole list of problems that go beyond discord existing!
