Twitter used Direct Message instead of Private Message because they needed to establish that there is legally no understanding of privacy for DMs, because Twitter will surrender the contents of DMs to law enforcement / government / data collection. Fediverse should also use DM because there is again no guarantee of privacy (and you do not expect there to be).
this post was submitted on 22 Jul 2023
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Asklemmy
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As if admins of the older forum softwares couldn't just query the database for anyone's private messages.
Didn’t they also switch the wording from “data protection” to “data usage”?
Still, the conversation is private, as in not public. Even if it is surrendered to the authorities, the'll probably never be released publicly (unless leaked).
I suppose it's a slightly more accurate term. The messages here are not truly private since they are not encrypted, but since they are sent directly no one should read them in the normal course of using the platform. Calling them private might imply to people that other people cannot read them, rather than the reality that it is just very unlikely anyone will. I would also argue that if something is released to an authority it is not "private" even if it is not publicly available.
Honestly, it doesn't really matter which you use. People will generally understand either way, so you can go ahead and keep saying PM and others will say DM and we can all just understand that they mean the same thing.
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I think Twitter might have been the first time I saw DM used but it stands for direct message.
Twitter is where it started.
And every 'hip' person started talking about sliding into someone's DM and it became the default application.
PM is still used in professional settings sometimes.
I somehow managed to read "default" as "segfault."
… I may have spent too much time debugging annoying shit today
DM is direct message and seems to have started around the same time things culturally shifted away from forums and boards more toward social media.
And now people don't even understand me, like I wrote "I'll PM you" and they said "What 🤨" 🤦.
Guess I'll have to shift from using PM to DM... though it seems completely illogical to me, but hey, that's life I guess.
"I'll Prime Minister you"
"I'll prime meridian you"
"I'll post mortem you"
"I'll prima dona you"
"I'll Pringle Mingle you"
Gonna steal "pringle mingle", sounds like a great insult lol
"I'll dungeon master you"
"I'll deathmatch you"
That last one was probably used at some point in time though..
I somehow never realized it was a shift from forums. I've used both terms interchangeably with a bias towards DM. TIL
Same, but prefer PM. We both know what we mean :p
Yup, and that's what matters
I'll be you Dungeon Master any day ~~<3
Playing Tuesdays and Thursdays, bring a barbarian or fighter.
when did things change from people calling them PMs to DMs.
I don't think I've ever heard it called a "Pungeon Master"
You, are a pun-geon master.
PM means private message. Nothing on Facebook or Twitter ever suggested that personal messages were private, so they used direct message instead to make sure there was no legal confusion.
I assume it's direct message. I also come from the forum scene and grew up with PMs. The cynic in me says maybe the big social media companies are shy of using the "private" word when their business model revolves around exploiting user data. Alternatively it's just language evolving over time.
“Direct Message” , from Twitter.
DM stands for Dungeon Master, the person who makes up the story in the game Dungeons and Dragons
More like Dork Moron! Now give me your lunch money.
DM means Dungeon Master to me, so I go with PM, if I don't just say message.
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I prefer the terms DM, especially if the messaging system doesn't rely on E2EE. If the server admins can read it, then it's not private.
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Because of the phrase 'slide into the DMs'. I tried to 'slide into the PM' but the Prime Minister wasn't having any of that
Direct Message.
I've only really seen "DM" used this way with Twitter, so I have to assume that's what Twitter calls private messages.
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DM/PM/IM all mean the same thing
Direct message, I think it mainly comes from twitter where you could add a "d" before someone’s @ to message them, maybe the use of "direct" instead of "private" was to avoir the confusion with private accounts?
Just think of the P in PM as a D, but with a tiiiiiiny vertical line going down from the bottom left so it’s a P.
Good one 🤣.
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