My only option is trying to disable all notifications and all notification sounds everywhere, but still I get those dots even when I'm not mentioned.
edit:
I think the root of the problem is that Discord is trying to game the user attention/retention/time spent in app by flooding the user with notifications. In IRC, you had to explicitly enable every notification, otherwise you'd never get notified of anything. "Disable everything by default unless I turn it on" seems to be made as difficult as possible on Discord.