So Twitter created a rather obscure new setting in its privacy menu called “Receive Direct Messages from Anyone.” Now, people you don’t follow can send you a direct message, or DM, in private. Here’s why this setting got people’s knickers in a bunch — for some pretty good reasons.
First of all, the whole point of Twitter has always been that it’s a public conversation. So DMs, Twitter’s answer to private messages, have generally been kind of a slapped-on feature. One of the main selling points of Twitter DMs is that people can’t send them to you unless you follow them. So you only get non-public messages from people you actually want to hear from.
