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
77 points (85.3% liked)
Asklemmy
43810 readers
1 users here now
A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions
If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!
- Open-ended question
- Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
- Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
- Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
- An actual topic of discussion
Looking for support?
Looking for a community?
- Lemmyverse: community search
- sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
- !lemmy411@lemmy.ca: a community for finding communities
~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~
founded 6 years ago
MODERATORS
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.
I ran into a person the other day, I wrote "I'll PM you" and he replied "What is PM 🤨" 🤷. They may be young or just a late internet adopter, but still, that was just a sign for me that I should probably adopt the new DM lingo, as some people just don't understand what I'm talking about.
load more comments
(6 replies)
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
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.
“Direct Message” , from Twitter.
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.
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.
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.
Well, yes that is true, but still, it's not public either.
I might have to change my lingo to using DM instead of PM cuz some people don't actually know what I'm talking about.
DM means Dungeon Master to me, so I go with PM, if I don't just say message.
I say "text" even though I almost never mean SMS
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.
Dude, everyone calls them DMs, on FB, here, Reddit... in fact, I've never seen anyone call them PMs, except for me.
Direct message became ubiquitous in the wake of "slide into your DM's" as a phrase.
At least in my experience.
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?
It's what some people call a /whisper
Or /msg
i always preferred to /query
load more comments
(1 replies)
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 🤣.
view more: next ›