Want to receive direct messages (DMs) from any random Twitter users, whether you follow them or not? That option didn't previously exist for most Twitter accounts, but a Monday announcement confirmed that the service is overhauling its DM access in two interesting ways—and one of those, in its current implementation, has more privacy implications than are apparent at first glance.

The most obvious change, as explained on Twitter's help site, is a toggle that users can enable if they want to receive DMs from anybody. By default, Twitter only opens up DM access between accounts if they follow each other. Essentially, the service checks for two users to virtually shake hands before they can talk behind closed doors. However, some verified and highly followed accounts have been given this "let anybody DM me" option for quite some time.

Additionally, we've confirmed that even if you don't enable that new toggle, Twitter has still opened the door to a DM conversation so long as one person follows the other. It's not totally cut-and-dried, though. Let's say @DrPizza (Ars' Peter Bright) chooses to officially follow @samred (yours truly) on Twitter. At that point, I can choose to send him a DM. Before I do so, Bright can't send me a DM at all—it's a one-way street, where only the followee can instigate a DM.

As soon as I send Bright a DM, however, the private-convo floodgates open—and to clarify, the conversational two-way street from that point on is what Twitter says is new in today's update. (Twitter says users could always send DMs to followers regardless of whether they followed back or not, but some of Ars' accounts weren't able to do so until today's update.)

While testing this out, we found a weird vulnerability in the process. Should I choose to unfollow any user who I had previously DMed, they will still be able to send me messages, so Twitter assumes I have already granted that person conversational access as per this new system change. (If I unfollow a user who I had not DMed with previously, however, that user will again be blocked from chatting me up in private... unless, of course, they continue to follow me and I, the followee, instigate a DM.)

What all this means, then, is that Twitter has opened the door to one new means of contacting a user without consent—which, to be fair, can be shut down by outright blocking an offender. Should you simply want to silence DMs from a user who you'd otherwise like to continue keeping tabs on, Twitter offers an odd but working solution. Simply delete your entire DM history with that user.

A Twitter spokesperson confirmed that all of these changes—along with a new DM button on compatible profile pages within the service's mobile apps (as shown in this embedded image)—began rolling out to users across the service today.

Condemning GamerGate by name

This update—and its potential to open users up to more private abuse and nuisances—comes days after Twitter general counsel Vijaya Gadde wrote an open letter in the Washington Post about the service's ongoing struggle with complaints over negative and abusive content. "We need to do a better job combating abuse without chilling or silencing speech," Gadde wrote on Thursday, and she was the first major Twitter representative to go on the record condemning the GamerGate movement by name. Gadde seemingly called out GamerGate followers' "hateful speech in tweets directed at women or minority groups" that occurred "during GamerGate and other incidents."

Gadde then listed anti-harassment efforts that Twitter had already described in prior announcements, including a tripling of staff on the service's safety team, a much shorter response time to abuse reports, better tools for users to report on abuse they see on the site, and outright bans of such content as revenge porn. However, while Gadde's letter talked at length about "thoughtful" applications of anti-harassment tools and efforts, it didn't take a stand on the idea that abusive speech on the platform might not be protected speech—presumably because the world of online speech has yet to face a major "fighting words" test in any major American court.

Over the weekend, American comedian Louis CK came out swinging against Twitter, though unlike other high-profile celebs who have complained about the site, he didn't take issue with anonymous abuse. During an interview on Sirius XM show Opie Radio, he said that using the service "made me feel bad," noting that he regularly worried about how brief, rapid-fire messages would translate to millions of followers. "It was the worst things I ever said, heard and seen by the most people," CK said. "It's the worst possible scenario."