I am quite new here and I use global for discovery. The amount of disturbing content is crazy but not surprising. It is useful to see how people behave when there are no consequences
What are better ways to see what is going on on this platform?
Discussion
First thing to understand is that you're not on a platform. If you prefer, you're on many platforms all at once.
Check your relays list. You're basically posting to a bunch of websites all at once. If you don't like the moderation policy of a relay, you can remove it, or hide it in your global view but keep it for people you follows.
Discovery is best done as a network effect (and honestly "friends of friends" should be its own view)
Follow some people and check who they follow and repeat