@themipper @scottjenson we've been through this before. In the early days, Twitter DMs were specified by typing `d username` and then the text. As you may imagine, this led to several spectacular privacy fails.

IMO we know enough at this point to say private messages should be completely separate from the public timeline. They are different contexts that should be kept separate because the consequences of a mix up could be disastrous.

@scottjenson as often happens in UX, it comes down to ontology.

Is this a place for publishing or communicating? Are DMs in service primarily to facilitating the former or exclusively for the latter?

Someone has to decide. I can't imagine that's easy in a volunteer-driven org.

@scottjenson I can imagine encryption would be a very important feature for lots of folks drawn to the Fediverse.

@scottjenson here's another way to put it: for me, unless DMs are shown separately from the public timeline, the fact they're encrypted wouldn't make a difference. The dedicated DM space is the critical feature, encryption can follow.

@scottjenson it's great that you've shared this question. It's a good example of feature prioritization tradeoffs.

For me, encrypted DMs wouldn't matter in Mastodon. As a rule, I don't share things here privately that I wouldn't want to be made public.

... and that's mainly because (as you point out) DMs appear in the public timeline. It's such a confusing UI choice that I'm VERY careful about what I write in DMs here.