YouTube has finally brought back its DMs feature, but only in these countries by David Uzondu
Late last year, YouTube started testing a "new" way to share videos directly with friends, without having to leave the app. Now, the video giant has announced that is now rolling out a revamped direct messaging inbox, which lets you share videos, Shorts, and live streams and have conversations about them, directly on YouTube. The platform limits this feature to 18+ users who are signed in to a verified channel and use the latest mobile app version.
Direct messaging on YouTube first became a thing back in 2017 inside the mobile app (later renamed to "Messages"), where users could chat one-on-one and share clips directly, but all that came to an end on September 18, 2019, when Google decided to shut it down after giving users a month to download a .zip file archive of their past chats.
No one really knows why YouTube killed the feature, but users were encouraged to migrate to the public Comments section, on Community tab posts, and via YouTube Stories. The previous incarnation suffered from moderation challenges, prompting Google to implement stricter safety guidelines and age verifications for this new iteration.
Here's a list of the countries where the re-launched feature is currently available, though note that Brand Accounts do not have access to it, at least for now:
Countries
American Samoa
Austria
Belgium
Brazil
Bulgaria
Croatia
Cyprus
Czech Republic
Denmark
Estonia
Finland
France
Germany
Greece
Guam
Hungary
Iceland
Ireland
Italy
Latvia
Liechtenstein
Lithuania
Luxembourg
Malta
Netherlands
Northern Mariana Islands
Norway
Poland
Portugal
Puerto Rico
Romania
Singapore
Slovakia
Slovenia
Spain
Sweden
Switzerland
U.S. Virgin Islands
United Kingdom
United States
Before you can use the feature, you first have to send an invite link to your contact. Invite links expire exactly seven days after you create them. If the person on the other end accepts the invite, you can exchange videos directly and text back and forth inside the app.
To delete a message, just long-press on the message and tap unsend to remove it for both users. You can also delete entire conversations by long-pressing the thread and selecting delete, but the other person will continue to see the chat history on their end. To make sure everything remains safe, YouTube monitors these messages to ensure they follow Community Guidelines.
The problem of course is simply that government does not always know best. My point is that agency is taken away from the EU consumer in these cases. I'm sorry, but I do not believe that governments (politicians) are inherently good, and "looking out for me." Primarily they look to themselves and their own personal desires first, foremost, and always. When the EU or the DOJ fines these companies, claiming to "represent the welfare of the consumer," how much of these billion-dollar judgments are handed to the consumers they claim to represent? Not even a dollar, as I've seen. Yet the EUC lawyers who are paid to sit around and dream up these suits make huge commissions on the fines the EUC adjudicates, which is an ironclad fact I hope everyone is aware of. It's also rank corruption, of course, but that's another topic. Last, when the EU inflicts these judgments, or the DOJ, take your pick, the costs are bundled right along in the cost of the goods and services these companies provide the consumers they are "looking out for." If you are someone who believes his government is his savior then you have my condolences. I think Apple is right here, because the whole scheme of consumer choice is that consumers pick and choose among the products companies offer.
Microsoft Windows is more compatible with third party software and hardware than any desktop OS on Earth, which is my sole reason for choosing it. Just because the EUC forces companies do certain things it knows the companies do not want to do, "or else", has no bearing on consumer benefit. This Siri thing is almost idiotic it's so infantile. But this is what the EUC does when the EU in Brussels becomes cash-strapped and needs a big infusion of cash. Some people get upset by "big companies" but it's the opposite when governments dwarf the size and scope of these companies, which is so obvious it hurts....
I mean you can't honestly believe that forcing Apple to do things with Siri it has its own reasons to decline is something that "opens up" Apple, do you? Say it aint' so...
There's this from last year https://gist.github.com/threat...364659a8887841aa43deca4efd9 but nothing about a buffer overflow that MS somehow can't code against.
No matter what, it makes sense to take a "protected by default" approach.