I recently noticed that I have this subsection in the mailbox that is titled requests

What does this even mean?
I have a couple of messages in there which are months old

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SW-User

It means you can choose who can message you, depending on their age or if you follow them or they follow you etc. you can set your messages so you get messages from everyone on this site in your inbox or filter them to not get inbox messages from anyone like I have now. I’m no longer interested in talking to people here.