If you’ve been around the internet for, honestly, as long as I have (since 2001), there are changes that you notice.
One that always confounded me, was that PMs on forums or whatever suddenly became DMs.
Always made me go “Why? PMs already had a name, why did they change it?”, it’s not even a matter of PMs getting better somehow and the name being changed.
And yesterday, for some reason, I dedicated half a neuron to thinking about it and I got to a conclusion. Kinda stupid, but just stupid enough to be exactly the explanation.
“Private” messages. Which usually they really aren’t as they are stored in the database as plain text. As such the pedantic side of tech decided to change the name to “Direct” Messages since with this new name there is no allusion to them being private in any way, shape or form. And you can’t complain when they use the info they gather from your PMs in some way.
Them gathering info from your “Private Messages” would be a (possible) legal problem, gathering info from your “Direct Messages” is something completely different.
And this was my seriously stupid thought for yesterday.