Microsoft Starts Blocking YouTube Links From Being Shared On MSN And Windows Live Messenger

Posted by Vikrant in Saturday, May 10th 2008

Topics: Technology
Tags: Block, Microsoft, MSN Messenger, Windows Live Messenger, YouTube

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Twitter is filled with messages about Microsoft blocking MSN and Windows Live Messenger messages with YouTube links from being delivered to recipients.

All the messages having YouTube links come back with a message saying that the link could not be delivered to the recipients.

This block seems to be related to the recent launch of Messenger TV in 20 countries which allows for sharing video clips from MSN Video on messenger.

If it is not an error and an intentional move, Microsoft is surely hitting grounds on competition. Let’s see how long this block stays on messengers.

Update: Microsoft seems to have corrected the situation and here is the possible explanation from a Microsoft representative which is still hard to believe for me.

Popularity: 26% [?]

11 users responded to this post

garyvdh said in May 11th, 2008 at 12:05 am

I call BS. Works fine for me. I can send youtube links through MSN and Live Mail. No problem. You might want to check your facts before going to publish.

jauzion said in May 11th, 2008 at 12:09 am

Mate, you might want to check your own facts before posting. It’s not BS. Do a quick google search of the problem.

Vikrant said in May 11th, 2008 at 12:38 am

@Jauzion Thanks!!

@Garyvdh It has been tested and that’s why I wrote about it. You might want to do a quick search on Twitter about it. Here is a link to search results on Summize which tracks Twitter in real time.

http://summize.com/search?q=+msn+youtube+links

Volatile said in May 11th, 2008 at 4:07 am

Posting video links using youtube.net instead of youtube.com circumvents the problem.
Good work on failing, micro$oft!
Also, metacafe and all other video sites (including more “naughty” ones) are totally unblocked.

Volatile said in May 11th, 2008 at 4:19 am

I find it an unending source of amusement how M$ nowadays fail to be as mean as they always have been, due to impopularity by their users…

Support said in May 11th, 2008 at 4:24 am

Well..

Get Wireshark [http://www.wireshark.org/] and see for yourself.

Do your own experiment(s). Learn something. Stop being a sheep. Be the wolf.

Arian Xheziri said in May 11th, 2008 at 6:36 am

I experienced it yesterday for myself and it kinda looked strange at that moment. Soon I realized that it’s a general Microsoft problem and not mine. However at this very moment as I’m typing this comment, seems like everything has just turned back as good as it used to work earlier. I’ve just tested it like 2 minutes ago.
Cheers!

sawyer said in May 11th, 2008 at 8:52 am

no block here,beijing,China

executioner said in May 11th, 2008 at 1:56 pm

I have expirenced this yesterday, today they removed it. Also I noticed they doing the filtering at server-side, since im using pidgin as an MSN client, aswell my brother too, my youtube messages simply get back with an “unknown error”. Actually they are filtering *.download.php, also *.info, and many other strings. Its nice to know a third person at microsoft may read millions of msn messages freely.