@olivvybee Eh, I feel like this is kinda the point, the admins know you personally.

And yeah, that is mostly a good thing, but in this case people probably do feel awkward, because someone who knows them can potentially be interested in their messages. This could get extra hairy if at any point there's personal drama involved.

The security properties are the same in both cases, but the social ones are not.

It doesn't mean DMs are useless here, I still use them to have a little chat related to something on here, and I've used them to discuss commissions with artists, but when people are more uncomfortable with this than say Discord they're not being unreasonable.