Twitter made a change to its direct messaging feature this morning, one that initially caused a wave of negative feedback.
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An update has allowed people to private message users who are not following them, as opposed to the past system that requires both users to follow one another in order to send DMs both ways. In the old format, a user could receive a DM from someone he or she follows, but could not send a message unless that user followed them back.
Now, users can receive messages from anyone. CNET was among the first to report the news, but a key detail originally left out of the article caused a negative backlash on the social media platform at first. The new feature is opt-in and turned off by default (via The Mary Sue). Concern that open direct messages was the new default arose because of the harassment risks. Much has been said (even by Twitter itself) about the prevalence of harassment on the platform, and allowing any user to DM another only increases the potential.
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Those who combat bile and negativity on the service were immediately concerned about this "upgrade", as were frequent targets of harassment. Fortunately, the key detail that the feature is optional more or less does away with the concern, as anybody worried about a flood of personal attacks straight to their inbox will not be forced to use the feature. If you're happy to be able to converse with anyone and don't fear (or aren't bothered by) attacks, open direct messaging can be turned on in your settings.
