YouTube discontinues private messages to focus on keeping things public

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge YouTube is shutting down its private messaging feature on September 18th, the company announced in a support post. It said it made the decision after choosing to focus its attention on public conversations, like the Stories feature it launched last year. YouTube launched its in-app messaging feature back in August 2017, meaning it will have been live on the service for just over two years before being discontinued.
YouTube didn’t say exactly why it&