1y ago

Why do people call it DM?

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.
- 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.
- Fediverse should also use DM because there is again no guarantee of privacy (and you do not expect there to be).
  Matrix is the fediverse's messaging platform. It has end-to-end encryption, so you do actually have a guarantee of privacy.
  
  There are DMs on lemmy and they are not using Matrix. Matrix's security doesn't matter if you are not actually using Matrix
  
  Matrix is not part of the Fediverse

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"
  
  I somehow never realized it was a shift from forums. I've used both terms interchangeably with a bias towards DM. TIL
  
  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.
- I say "text" even though I almost never mean SMS

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.

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
- Yeah of pst

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 🤣.

81 comments