I spent years, but I didn’t find any interesting acquaintances, and I came across such people that I thought I was in the Stone Age, I seemed to be dumb by 25 percent at least when I communicated in discord or I was terribly bored, it’s difficult to explain, but that’s about how I can describe my experience.
It depends on where you go on Discord, like any other social media. Personally, Discord is literally the only social media I really use, apart from Lemmy. This is largely because the architecture is so well-suited to small, comfortable groups of friends. It feels more natural than the void-screaming feeling that feed-style social media imparts.
I’ve been happy with it, and so have my friends. We have a place where we can consistently meet up and hang out for Minecraft and D&D, and it’s had reliable tools to facilitate that.
The massive public servers can feel very overwhelming, I’ll give you that. The more well-managed ones feel like a favorite cafe, bar, or pub. The more hectic and poorly moderated ones feel like a warzone. Moderating them really is more or less the same skillset you’d need to run a bar, anyway.
As far as pedophiles, scammers, creeps, and generally nasty people go? Honestly, black mold grows in your bathroom if you don’t open the window and air it out frequently. Evil people end up where target-rich environments are. Be vigilant, and you’ll keep your people safe.