@dcent About the email reminders: it's quite uncommon to find that kind of email. And you know, you can't get notifications right now without a configured email, so it really makes no sense. Using a (free) new email account not connected to you in anyway would be a better option, I believe.

About DMs: yeah, they are not working properly, and the UI is not intuitive at all. There are several bug reports about it, and v3 seems to address the problems.

This is probably a good summary on the issue: https://gnusocial.net/url/9103325