I am more and more thinking of this as a symptom of the "Data wars." I define that as the conflict between how much data someone is willing to share in exchange for a 'free' service.
The services aren't free of course, they pay their overhead and costs by re-selling the data they collect about their users. And as other sources of revenue (like ads) have lost value the data service has filled in. And since the data buyers know that the service provider is in a weak negotiating position they keep pressing on them to get more and more datamilk out of their data cows for the same amount of money.
The pressure is on to create a low friction pay as you go service for these things that don't extract data.
Since the OP is specifically talking about Discord, it’s worth mentioning that what you’re talking about doesn’t seem to be the case for them - they make money from Nitro subscriptions and their game store, and state in their privacy policy that they are “not in the business of selling your information” (https://discordapp.com/privacy, in the section ‘Our Disclosure of Your Information’).
So relating back to the post, their justification doesn’t necessarily make it right, but I think it’s incorrect to attribute it to a malicious cause.
The services aren't free of course, they pay their overhead and costs by re-selling the data they collect about their users. And as other sources of revenue (like ads) have lost value the data service has filled in. And since the data buyers know that the service provider is in a weak negotiating position they keep pressing on them to get more and more datamilk out of their data cows for the same amount of money.
The pressure is on to create a low friction pay as you go service for these things that don't extract data.