That’s wild. Sorry to hear that.
I don’t know, I use the private chat box all the time. And I feel like OGS has a lot more chat options than any other Go server. So I’m probably the wrong person to ask, because I’m totally satisfied.
Regarding private chats and rank cheating / inflation: I am absolutely no expert on that, I’m just not keen to give players more opportunities and tools to do that. That’s all I thought when I opposed it.
But maybe with AI the fight against botting and cheating is already lost anyway.