I mean… I come from the forum scene and they were always called PMs, as in Private Message. What in the hell does DM stand for and when did things change from people calling them PMs to DMs.
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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).
As if admins of the older forum softwares couldn’t just query the database for anyone’s private messages.
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.
Didn’t they also switch the wording from “data protection” to “data usage”?
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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I rolled a 20, I don’t make the rules!
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, 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 🤣.
