I think we had a similar discussion here on Lemmy about DMs before and I also have to explain quite often why none of the regular forums I administer have a DM feature.
Superficially, it looks like a nice convenience feature to the regular user, but typically ends up being abused by a small subset of users and is impossible to moderate.
So IMHO overall it does more harm then good in most cases.
I think we had a similar discussion here on Lemmy about DMs before and I also have to explain quite often why none of the regular forums I administer have a DM feature.
Superficially, it looks like a nice convenience feature to the regular user, but typically ends up being abused by a small subset of users and is impossible to moderate.
So IMHO overall it does more harm then good in most cases.
User and community blocking is coming soon, so at least here private messages will have some more control.