YouTube has decided to kill off its internal messaging service a little over two years after introducing the feature. The ability to send direct messages will be removed on 18 September.

The ‘Messages’ feature enables users to share videos directly with friends and family and then discuss these videos directly within YouTube, supporting both individual and group conversations.

It’s not known if a lack of adoption is the reasoning behind YouTube’s decision, but it says that it’s been “focused on public conversations with updates to comment, posts, and stories” since debuting the native messaging feature.

“We’re constantly re-evaluating our priorities and have decided to discontinue YouTube’s native direct messaging feature while we focus on improving public conversations,” the video-sharing platform said in a support post.

YouTube recommends that users continue to share videos using the external social network platforms available through the ‘Share’ button on video pages. Users are able to download their existing chats by going to takeout.google.com/settings/takeout/custom/youtube.