I saw someone talking about how every other social media platform has direct messaging. And I saw this person complaining that there's no good way to get someone else's IM information for outside of cohost. I'll tell you how. You send this person an ask saying "here is my telegram/discord/whatever other program you use." The receiver doesn't have to publicly answer that, and they're able to discreetly send you an IM on your program of choice to let you know it's them.
We did it on Tumblr in the 2010s before messaging was spread like a virus across the site. We didn't need it. It's made the overall experience of that site worse. Cohost does not need it either.