@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.

@olivvybee to back this up:

each single mastodon instance has about the same level of protection over DMs for that single instance as a previous workplace had over the current location of a plurality of long-haul freight in the united states

that is, you have to actually have access to the server and database to read it

at the big social media sites? not so much.

and to head off the question, yes, twitter too, even if they started encrypting at rest:

Currently, we do not offer protections against man-in-the-middle attacks. As a result, if someone–for example, a malicious insider, or X itself as a result of a compulsory legal process--were to compromise an encrypted conversation, neither the sender or receiver would know.