I 'member when they were called PMs, and were Private.
Then the social media Bros took over and removed the privacy and called them DMs.
this post was submitted on 25 Nov 2025
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Even PMs were never private though. I used to run forum software (both Invision Power Board and phpBB 20 years ago in the early 2000s) on my web site and PMs were records in the MySQL DB. I never did, but I could read anyone’s PMs if I wanted to.
Yep I was admin on a site too there was a way to do it. I never did though
I remember PMs too! I still call them that sometimes
DMs are just as private as PMs. It's not like server admins/app operators could not also see the messages in past services when we called them PMs.
Learn something new everyday, we never even thought about sending messages in paper footballs, we just played the game.
Still have a box of these bad boys from the 90s! Whole back and forth conversations with my middle school bestie, preserved in all their paper football glory.
I wish I'd kept those kind of things! It's little things like that you'd love to reread