Twitter’s direct DM test is a terrible idea

Illustration by Alex Castro / The VergeTwitter is exploring a new way to send DMs on iOS, and it involves letting users slide into your inbox through a link on your tweets, bypassing the DM button on your profile. The platform says this will make it easier to “start a conversation” from your timeline — but you can probably see how this can go very, very wrong.

Please don’t do this. One extra step of having to go to someone’s profile to send a DM cuts back on harassment. This is almost never about “starting a conversation,” when people are sending unsolicited DMs. At least give us a safety feature to not allow this on our tweets.— Eliza Orlins (@elizaorlins) February 4, 2022

As public defender Eliza Orlins points out, offering a shortcut to your DMs could make users even…

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