Correct, this is what we do on a reasonably large server (tens of thousands). Public channels are free game, staff channels are restricted from bots. Honestly I dont see a bot owner having a budget to store all that message data I store only very specific meaningful data. For example I have a bot where users can message our bot to contact our staff team. You can see why reading message_content is extremely useful. This allows mods to communicate to users via the bot and appear fully impartial.

Soon I fear my efforts are going to be thrown away because I dont want to expose personal information with Discord.

How long before we read a headline here on HN that someone hacked all Discords verified bot developer information? No thanks.