Enhanced Direct Messaging Settings: TikTok Allows Users to Select Who Can be in Touch with Them
Syed Imran Haider 
TikTok has reportedly increased its Direct Messaging or DM settings to allow users to choose who can be in touch with them through texting. The app expands the choice for users by giving them options, including everyone, mutual followers, suggested friends, and no one.
These options also comprise choosing people you have sent you messages to let them send you text.
Before this change, users could receive a message from those people who they have known as friends or get recommendations to send a DM to on the platform. ‘The Information’ was the first body to spot the change.
Options to Choose Who Can Send You DM
According to TikTok’s website, choosing the Everyone option will let anyone send you a Direct Message. Your inbox will receive messages from mutual friends and people you follow on the platform. You can receive messages from users you do not follow in your Message Requests. TikTok allows you to accept, report, and even delete these messages.
The Suggested Friends option indicates that recommended friends, synchronized phone contacts, and Facebook friends can send you Direct Messages. Likewise, choosing ‘Mutual Friends’ will allow your followers you follow back can send you a Direct Message.
On the other hand, if you choose the ‘No one’ option, nobody will be able to send you direct messages. Despite the new changes to DM settings, TikTok Message History is still accessible through the inbox, though you cannot receive a new DM in those conversations.
Way to Change DM SettingsÂ
Modifying your Direct Message settings is easy through some steps. First, click the Profile icon at the bottom of the Home Screen to open the menu. Next, you will choose Settings and Privacy and then click Privacy. Here, you will see Direct Messages and the options to decide on people you want to access through DMs.
The expanded changes to TikTok DM settings mark the latest way the video hosting app boosts socializing tools on its platform to compete against other social media sites like Instagram and Facebook.
In 2022, TikTok unveiled the Friends tab to replace the Discover option. The company’s move to replace the old Discover showed that it anticipated offering a new method of recommending content based on users’ real friendships.
TikTok unveiled a BeReal clone later in September last year. The new option known as TikTok Now inspires users to post their favorite content regularly at a specific time alongside seeing posts from their friends. The company has already succeeded as a blooming entertainment medium. It plans to improve its social features to let users spend more time on its app.
Besides offering new social features, TikTok is trying to defend its existence in the USA. Shou Zi Chew, the chief executive, met with many influential think tanks and other public interest individuals in Washington and shared details on how TikTok plans to prevent data about American users from leaving the US.
