Meta’s Threads Is Adding DMs for Everyone. Yay?

Meta’s Threads is introducing a long-requested feature that it’s largely lacked since it launched two years ago: DMs.

Threads had been testing the feature, but Meta announced on July 1 that the feature was ready to roll out to everybody. No more limited-run testing. It’s live for everybody. Almost everybody.

finally, dms

Meta, the owner of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, created Threads to compete against Bluesky, X, and Mastodon, playing a game of catch-up as the social media tweet-o-sphere has shattered in the wake of Twitter’s epic self-flagellation under the ownership of Elon Musk.

“More than a third of daily Threads users with connections follow mostly different accounts on Threads than on Instagram, showing that Threads is establishing its own unique user base,” wrote Meta in a July 1 press release.

It just lacked DMs on a wider scale, something that Threads says has been one of its most requested features. Now, Threads will open up the ability for people to send and receive DMs.

Only people 18 years old or older can send DMs, and you have to be followers or mutual followers in order to send them. I won’t say that means no randos, because sometimes your friend’s friend is truly a rando, and you question why you’re even tethered together on social media.

Through the settings menu, you’ll be able to specify who can and can’t send you messages. You can allow people who don’t follow you on Threads or Instagram to send you messages, if you like, and can send them to a dedicated message requests folder to keep them from cluttering up your DMs inbox from, you know, your real friends.

Group messages are making an experience, too, so you can recreate all those group texts that were initiated to plan a park hang or a movie watch and then outlived their usefulness, limping along in half-use like a zombie.