Hi.
The subject says it all.
Spongebob wishes to only receive private messages from their friends.
And he gets a similar message when he attempts to text me.
Applies to web client only.
This issue is not there when both are in the native client.

Hello,
in fact when your settings are friends only, unless something changed recently, even on the Windows client, you can't message outside of the friends list as it simply wouldn't make sense since they won't be able to reply.

However, there is really a limitation here, because on the web client you can't message people outside of your friends list regardless of how your settings are configured.

When I asked why that is a long time ago, the explanation is that it is much easier for spammers to come back after a ban from the web client, and this was done to prevent private message spams. I don't find this so necessary, but that's only my personal opinion.
The explanation for that was given in a somewhat unrelated topic at https://www.qcsalon.net/en/forum7/topic79001

I am sorry, I did not explain it properly.
Even if you are friends, and you have the privacy settings to friends only, it happens if one of the persons is in web client.

Are you sure they haven't removed you from their list of friends? That may cause this problem.
Assuming I got you right, I can't reproduce.
If we have persons A and B. A has their privacy settings so their friends can message them only and is using the web client, and B is using the Windows client. In my case, both A and B can message each other, as long as they are really friends.

Yes, I can affirm that the person who created this discussion was a friend of mine because, when I hit enter on his name on the friends list page, the option to "Delete from friends list" appears rather than "Add as a friend".

@Spaceship can you check the same and post a reply?

Thank you, I reproduced the bug and there is really something weird going on, but it is actually the opposite of what I thought.
As a web client user, for some reason if I set my privacy settings so that everybody can message me, then I can't message anybody anymore, even if they are my friends. They can't message me either. For now until this is fixed, if you are using the web client, set your privacy settings so that your friends only can message you, and then at least you should be able to talk to your friends.

Hello,

There was effectively a small bug, introduced with the latest update. This should be fixed now. Thank you for signaling !

I think it happened when you switched between the web and the playroom app.