GoKawiilDiscord has become a go-to tool for friend groups, fan communities and online organizations of various sizes because of how simple it makes it to host text chats, voice calls and share your screen with other people. Over the last few years it's also become a lot more annoying to use for those tasks for some of the same reasons. In an effort to pay for servers and keep members safe, Discord has adopted an approach to subscriptions, ads and age-verification that have rubbed a lot of users the wrong way.
Most social platforms of a certain size will deal with similar issues, so at least for now, the only real way to avoid Discord's problems is to switch to smaller group chats or take the big step of hosting your own server. There's a growing number of Discord alternatives out there, but open-source chat platforms where you have complete control over your data and don't have to worry about features being locked behind a subscription will likely be your best option.