Cohost does not need to be A Website That Does Everything. Back when I used to use message boards, private communications happened over a completely different service. You'd specifically exchange your contact details with the person who wanted to DM you.
I suppose there's both more, and less, such services now. We don't still have AIM or MSN Messenger (as they were - I know there's revival attempts now). But seemingly every platform that exists for single person to single person communication, has it as a side feature of a bigger do-everything service. Oh, add me on Facebook Messenger. Oh, here's my Discord tag. Find me on Telegram.
It definitely wasn't all roses back when dedicated one-on-one messengers existed. If your AIM name got shared around, nothing really stopped someone else from just dropping a message at you. But because those platforms were designed around messaging, one end to one other end, they did it well enough. Compared to, say, Twitter and Tumblr's DMs, which are abject misery to work with. Yeah. Let's not turn Cohost into that.
