News has been spreading that Twitter is slowly introducing changes to how it handles direct messages (DMs) and controlling the types of links that can be sent through DMs from non-verified accounts.
Restricting the ability to send private links rather than filtering out spammy or malicious ones could discourage users from sharing content on Twitter rather than other private messaging services like SMS, Facebook Chat or MSN Messenger.
I wouldn't normally object to policy changes that could prevent users from being exposed to unwanted messages or malicious content, but this seems to be an extreme response to a largely solvable problem.
The second change appears to be the ability for users to receive direct messages from users they do not themselves follow. This is being rolled out slowly though a new account setting.
This might be particularly useful for organizations that provide customer service and technical support via Twitter and want to have private communications with customers without already having had to follow those users.
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Restricting the ability to send private links rather than filtering out spammy or malicious ones could discourage users from sharing content on Twitter rather than other private messaging services like SMS, Facebook Chat or MSN Messenger.
I wouldn't normally object to policy changes that could prevent users from being exposed to unwanted messages or malicious content, but this seems to be an extreme response to a largely solvable problem.
The second change appears to be the ability for users to receive direct messages from users they do not themselves follow. This is being rolled out slowly though a new account setting.
This might be particularly useful for organizations that provide customer service and technical support via Twitter and want to have private communications with customers without already having had to follow those users.
Read More
