The forum wants to stay clean from people trading or selling seeds and such. Private messaging would or could foster what could be illegal activity from law enforcements standpoint. If PMs were allowed the only way to make sure I’m not asking others to ship me samples of their grow would be to watch all the private messages.
I know it takes place on all other social media platforms. But I know this forum is trying to stay squeaky clean. It used to have PM in the past. So you can probably thank those who abused it for it being gone.
Here is an old thread with some moderator comments about it. Have to scroll down some to find them.