
After September 18th, you’ll no longer be able to send messages on YouTube - jerrygoyal
https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/6401227?co=GENIE.Platform%3DAndroid&hl=en
======
utf985
This is sad. As someone who loves browsing the "hidden" side of YT where
videos and channels with sub 3 and 4 digit viewcount lurk and discovering
weird obscure content, this feature was a godsend. I have been able to contact
users that otherwise leave absolutely no contact info on their pages to ask
them about certain content they have uploaded on multiple occasions.

I really dislike how stuff like twitter and Instagram have become the standard
form of reaching anyone, as I have neither and your messages can very easily
become ignored due to the very nature of how these two social networks
operate.

~~~
not_a_cop75
This is the equivalent of Nintendo disabling profile pictures because of
people abusing it with penis pictures.

~~~
wDcBKgt66V8WDs
Not really? 1) you can still have profile pictures from a limited though large
set of their IP plus highly custom Mii and 2) the expected user bases and
interaction methods between platforms is not at all comparable.

~~~
kryogen1c
> 2) the expected user bases and interaction methods between platforms is not
> at all comparable.

Exactly. Pictures visible through normal use are not the same as an inbox you
have to go out of your way to read.

At the very least, the sensibe thing is to make messages opt-in or whitelist
only. Removing the feature to prevent harassment seems like a scapegoat. I
wonder if this was being utilized as an illegal communications channel and
YT\alphabet is worried about legal exposure

------
fortran77
Sad. They simply should give content producers the option of whether they want
to receive messages or not. (Similar to how you can turn comments on or off).
This way, individuals who received "targeted harassment" could be free of it,
and other individuals who don't have this problem, or are more thick-skinned
or tolerant, can receive messages. (One complaint in a recent lawsuit against
YouTube is that Google allow users to "harass" content creators. See
[https://variety.com/2019/digital/news/lgbtq-youtube-
lawsuit-...](https://variety.com/2019/digital/news/lgbtq-youtube-
lawsuit-1203302184/) ). I'm sympathetic to their concerns, and turning off the
ability to write messages or contact is one solution. There are already some
controls available.

I've used these messages quite a bit to contact people with similar "niche"
interests (restoring old electronic equipment from WWII era through the 60s)
and it's very useful.

~~~
magduf
That's impossible to do. A feature like that would be fairly simple to
implement, and would make sense, so it can't be done by Google. Google
products always have to have some kind of glaring missing feature.

An example I found not long ago is with Google Photos. If you create an album,
you can offer to share that album with other people, through their Google
account, their phone number, their email, etc. If they accept the invitation,
it notifies you and their little circle darkens. If not, it stays light, and
still stays in your list of people you've shared with. There's no way to
actually remove these unused invites, and these people just stick around as
"ghosts" forever. The only way to clean this mess up, according to Google, is
to turn off all sharing of your album, and then re-share with everyone you
want to share it with, so they all have to re-accept the share invitation (and
you have to manually enter in every email address, phone number, etc. again).
There's no way to just remove one of these "ghosts", even though you'd think
this is a very basic admin task. There's forums where people have complained
about this for years, and there is a Google person on there who just complains
about people using the forum for complaining like this instead of filing an
"official" feature request (which as we all know never goes anywhere), even
though this Google person could very well do this herself instead of
complaining about all the complaints.

~~~
bhalithan
Compelling take.

------
vaastav
TIL you could send messages on YouTube

~~~
teekert
TIL = Today I Learned... Had to Google that...

~~~
jraph
Good illustration of TIL by the way.

"TIL Today I Learned"

------
znpy
"Google continues the war against its own users", as someone will write about
this article.

~~~
Kaiyou
Probably in Comic Sans, too.

~~~
roddux
I think you were downvoted by people that didn't get the reference, cheers for
the reminder.

------
defqon
This was actually a pretty well-used feature back around ~2010. The problem
was that it was hidden away more and more every time the site was redesigned,
so its discoverability (and presumably use) basically dropped to zero over
time.

~~~
dspillett
I assumed it had already been quietly dropped, rather than just effectively
hidden. It would be interesting to see how much use it actually gets these
days.

~~~
cameronbrown
Yep. They dropped it a long long time ago and re-introduced this in 2017(?) as
a different feature.

------
cjbprime
Weird. YouTube had a messaging feature?

~~~
yoz-y
I work for YouTube and I did not know this was possible -_-; Or maybe I knew
and forgot.

~~~
0x8BADF00D
Just reintroduce the feature a few years later when everyone forgets. You’ll
get a promotion from what I hear.

------
ilikehurdles
It's so funny seeing Zawinski's Law hold up after all this time (replacing
"email" with "messaging"), and Google again fighting it.

I wish the culture of SaaS development would move away from this try-to-do-
everything mentality that always leads to anciliary features being modified or
removed, and instead focus on honing their core offering. No user cheers a
feature going away -- either they're ambivalent about it or annoyed for having
to switch away.

------
rubberstock
How come the orangered envelope is cherished on reddit, but youtube
discontinues the same feature? Has google entirely given up on getting a
social network?

Google seems to constantly create new messenger apps. Why would they
discontinue the one that could be used to turn youtube into a real social
network? Instead of hiding the feature, they should enhance it and make it
usable, i.e. make it easy to block harassment. Then they can offer an
optional! integration with their other messenger apps which would allow them
to compete with facebook.

~~~
freeflight
I also don't understand this, just like the decision to remove certain
features over time.

Used to be that YouTube had the option to translate comments from another
language, with a button right next to the comment, even before Twitter was
doing it.

While not perfect, the translations were usually still good enough to get what
people were writing and at times even good enough to have conversations across
language borders.

I really used to enjoy that part of YouTube, until the Google+ integration
completely removed that option [0]. Sure, now I could just have the browser
translate the whole website to read comments, but that always feels super
weird and like way more effort than just pressing a simple button right next
to a comment.

[0] [https://webapps.stackexchange.com/questions/100528/where-
did...](https://webapps.stackexchange.com/questions/100528/where-did-the-
youtube-comment-translate-button-go)

~~~
gnochi2001
Because in the current data-snowflake regulatory and legislative climate, it’s
too tough to get away with monetising content sent in a ‘private’ context.
Googles business model relies on being able to index and advertise to every
phrase you post, but I’m sure they don’t want to run into the same issues fb
has, because fb posts have an expectation of privacy. Hence google has no
interest in providing a private messaging platform.

~~~
Crosseye_Jack
And yet they provide a private messaging platform on their mobile OS and
online. Chat will be replacing hangouts, it’s where the devs from Allo went to
and supports things like RCS.

------
OliverJones
They offer no motivation for the change.

Are they trying to make it harder to weaponize nasty content?

Or do they just want to save a few bucks by stopping maintenance on a feature?

------
VBprogrammer
I don't imagine the average consumer would ever notice but I wonder how much
it is used by youtubers to arrange collaboration between different channels in
similar spaces. At least as a way of establishing initial contact.

It would be a shame to see collaboration between channels drop as that, in my
opinion, is one of the best parts of the medium.

------
agumonkey
Google services needs a Mean Time Before Finish indicator.

------
pcdoodle
One step further to being "alone together".

------
ninedays
Yet another feature being removed that noone ever remembers using.

~~~
gtirloni
Sounds good, right? Why "yet"?

------
FreakyT
You’d think they’d simply migrate to one of their other redundant chat
products!

But no, I suppose just killing the feature with no meaningful replacement
strategy is the new GOOGLE WAY™. I can’t wait to invest all my money in a
library of Stadia games that will surely last forever. /s

~~~
tomschlick
> You’d think they’d simply migrate to one of their other redundant chat
> products!

Too risky. They are probably going to deprecate those for another chat product
in 6 months.

------
mirimir
Funny. NoScript blocks this link as XSS.

------
realshowbiz
Does anyone have insights or ideas about why this change is being made?

------
lr
Step 6 seems to be misspelled: ‘Select “Creative archive”.’

------
Inhibit
Is it my imagination or is Google devoid of the ability to integrate it's
different "products"?

------
jamisteven
Damnit, how will I ever communicate with all my peeps from the tube of you.

------
unstatusthequo
Kinda wish they would disable comments. Those tend to bring out sides of
humanity that rarely show off any benevolence.

~~~
username90
What kind of videos are you watching with toxic comments? I never see them in
the topics I watch, only relevant or helpful ones.

