I refuse to use their “create a server” language. It is not a server by any definition of the word server.
You can set up a community on their servers.
I’m not sure why they chose to use misleading language, but it is misleading.
It’s wrong in terms of the technical implementation and right in terms of user experience.
Gamers are well familiar with different communities actually hosting servers and instances for games or voice chat pre discord. Discord offers the same experience but without physically being different servers. Keeping the name guides users in the same way OSs call it a recycling bin despite not actually being a bin.
I'm not sure it matters in this situation ...? Server/instance/VM/shard/... when used in this context is pure corporate naming BS. They'd have called it "setting up a new circle jerk" if they thought it would increase metrics
Fun fact: Discord called them guilds before realising that they could compete with paid services that set up actual (e.g. Mumble) servers for you by pretending this is equivalent and free
I also have trouble going along with the doublespeak. If a supermarket called their beer apple juice, I'd also not be offering my friends "apple juice", I'd call it what it is
Guild is innocuous enough and since the API docs still call their communities that, that can be a term to use among those in the know to have common and clear terminology
'Guilds in Discord represent an isolated collection of users and channels, and are often referred to as "servers" in the UI.' —https://discord.com/developers/docs/resources/guild