The Send Messages permission is separate from Create Public/Private Threads, with the default permission set to "Allow". As a result, an extremely common misconfiguration in public servers with restricted channels is that users are not properly restricted from creating threads.
This allows for arbitrary users to create these threads without necessarily having the proper permissions, such as allowing spam bots to send spam into your restricted channels.
Remediation: disable Create Public/Private Threads in all channels you don't want people to send messages in.