How to message another driver or organiser privately on Racey: who you can message, message requests, blocking, reporting, and the settings you control.
Quick start
Send a message
- Open Messages and press New message. It lists the people you can message, and anyone you already have a DM with, under each league you share (up to 100 at a time; type a name to find anyone else). You can also open the person's driver profile; in a league or team chat, an @mention opens it.
- Press Message next to their name, or on their profile. You only see someone when you can message them or already have a DM with them (see "Who you can message" below).
- Type in Write a message and press Send message (or Enter).
- Your first message is a request. They choose whether to accept it (see "Message requests").
Answer a request
- Open Messages in the top bar and choose the Requests filter.
- Open the request. At the bottom you see Accept, Decline and Block.
- After you press Accept you can reply.
Who you can message
You can message people you share a league or a team with. Both of you must have joined that league yourselves. In short:
- Members who joined with an invite link, an email invite, an organiser's invite that they accepted, a public join, or by creating the league. Organisers and other league staff count too.
- Drivers an organiser added to the roster, or a results import brought in, count once they have opened the league (or one of its chats) on Racey once. Until then, nobody can start a DM with them.
- Approved drivers count when they accepted the league rules and were not added automatically by a results import.
- Teammates count when you are both on the same current team and both also count in that team's league, as above.
- Someone banned or suspended in the league no longer counts there.
You also can't message someone who has turned DMs off or who has blocked you (or whom you have blocked). You can't message yourself.
Message requests
The first message between two people who have never written to each other is a request. Until the recipient accepts:
- You can send up to 3 messages. After that you see "You can send more once they accept your request."
- They get one alert, by email (and Discord if they linked it), saying who wants to message them. It never includes what you wrote, and your 2nd and 3rd messages don't send another.
- Links in the messages can't be clicked.
- There are no read receipts, no typing indicator, no reactions and no pins, for either of you.
The person who gets the request sees Accept, Decline and Block:
- Accept opens the chat normally.
- Decline removes the request from your list. The sender is not told. To them it still looks like a request that hasn't been answered, and they stay under the same 3-message limit.
- Block declines the request and blocks the sender (see "Blocking").
You can reply once you have accepted.
After a request is accepted
A DM then works like the other chats:
- Formatting, replies, reactions and emoji, from the toolbar and each message's Message actions menu.
- Edit or delete your own messages. An edited message shows "(edited)"; a deleted one shows "Message removed".
- Pin a message to keep it at the top. Either of you can pin.
- Links can be clicked.
- Typing indicator works; "Seen" works unless either of you has turned on Hide read receipts.
- Mute and archive from the More menu (⋯) at the top of the chat. A muted chat sends you no alerts.
Find your DMs under Messages, with the Direct filter.
Alerts
If you haven't seen a message, Racey can alert you by email, Discord or push, about 5 minutes after it was sent. Alerts never arrive between 11pm and 7am in the time zone on your profile.
An alert for a DM says who wrote to you ("Sam sent you a message" or "3 new messages from Sam"). It never includes what the message says. A new request sends one alert ("Sam wants to message you on Racey"), also without the message.
Turn alerts off under Settings → Privacy → Messages → Message alerts.
Turning DMs off
Go to Settings → Privacy → Messages and switch off Allow direct messages. The setting says "People who share a league or team with you can message you."
- Nobody can start a new DM with you. The Message button on your profile disappears for others, and you no longer appear in their New message list (unless you already have a DM with them).
- DMs you already have stay in your list and stay readable. The other person can no longer send you messages in them, and sees "You can't message this person."
- League chat, team chat and the organisers thread are not affected.
- Turning off Public Profile (Settings → Privacy) does not do this: league-mates can still message you until you switch off Allow direct messages.
Blocking
You can block someone in two places:
- On a request, with Block in the request banner.
- In a DM, from the More menu (⋯) at the top of the chat. Racey asks you to confirm.
The other person is not told. What changes:
- In DMs, neither of you can message the other. You can still open the chat, but you won't see their messages unless you press Show.
- In league and team chats, you both stay in the chat. Their messages show as "Message from a blocked user" with a Show link, and they don't count in your unread numbers or inbox previews. You get no alerts from them, including when they @mention you, and you are not offered them in the @mention list. Read receipts don't pass between you. They can still see your messages: blocking never hides you from them.
- In the organisers thread, if you block an organiser, that organiser can't post in your thread and will see that they can't. Other organisers can, and you can still write to them.
- A pending request from that person is declined.
Unblocking
Go to Settings → Privacy → Messages → Blocked people and press Unblock next to their name. You can message each other again if you still share a league or team. An old request that your block declined does not come back.
Reporting a message
Open the message's Message actions menu and choose Report. You can report a message even in a request you haven't accepted. Pick what's wrong: spam, harassment or bullying, hate, sexual content, self-harm, or child safety. You can add details. Reports go to the Racey team, and the person you report isn't told who reported them.
- If you report self-harm, you are shown crisis-support resources straight away.
- A child safety report hides the message for everyone at once while Racey reviews it. If someone is in immediate danger, contact your local emergency services.
Limits
Limits keep DMs free of spam. Racey shows a short message when you reach one.
| What | Limit |
|---|---|
| Messages you can send before a request is accepted | 3 |
| People you can start a new DM with | 20 in any 24 hours; 5 in the first 24 hours of a new account |
| Messages | 30 a minute and 500 a day, across all your chats |
| The same message | Sending it 5 times within a minute is blocked |
| Reports | 20 a day |
Privacy
Only the two people in a DM can read it. Racey staff cannot read DMs. The one exception is a report: when someone in the conversation reports a message, a Racey admin reviewing the report sees that message and the messages around it (up to 50 on either side), and every such view is logged. Child safety reports are handled by the Racey operator only.
See the Privacy Policy: Messaging for what is stored and for how long.
"You can't message this person"
Racey shows this one message whenever a DM isn't possible. It can mean:
- You don't share a league or team with them, or one of you hasn't joined it yourself yet.
- They have turned DMs off.
- One of you has blocked the other.
- You are suspended, one of you is banned or suspended in the league you share, or their account was deleted.
Racey shows the same message whatever the reason.
What's not here yet
Photos and files, and link previews, are not available in DMs yet. Copying a chat to Discord is only for league chat, and is not available yet.