Topic: Child Porn to Blame for Swapnote Being Discontinued

[Oblivion]

http://kotaku.com/child-predators-were-using-nintendos-swapnote-service-1459304126

Holy ****. No wonder it was discontinued so suddenly.

[Adrock]

While that's a terrible, terrible shame, you can't stop the signal (Serenity). Anyone can use anything inappropriately and as long as we're moving further and further into an increasingly connected future, that's just something we're going to have deal with. Did Nintendo think perverts weren't going to try to exchange this kind of material over one of their online services? Learn how to Internet, Nintendo.

How do you prevent this? You just can't, not entirely anyway. There are ways to limit minors from using the applications, but Nintendo can't do everything from their end. They can give people the tools, but those are useless if they aren't applied. That's like building a functional rocket ship then using it as a coffee table. Terminating the service completely is one way to prevent it from happening, but really, you're just punishing the many because of the actions of the very, very few. That's counterproductive. Nintendo needs to accept that these things happen; some people are just bad and have no decency. That shouldn't affect their responsible users or force their services to come to a screeching halt

[Shaymin]

They offer to set up parental controls to block things like this at initial boot - but if the kid got the PIN, they can easily bypass it. And it's four digits.

So instead of slapping Nintendo, I guess we have to slap the creepers.

[UncleBob]

I'd like to suggest a title change to "Nintendo to blame for Swapnote being discontinued".

This was a huge overreaction to a very minor (heh) connection to a Nintendo device.

So, child predator finds kids on some website.  Then, trades friend codes with them.  Then, photos start.

The initial contact had to happen outside of the Nintendo service.  Which means child predators can still just as easily contact and trade information with the kids.

I'm all for putting whatever kinds of optional parental controls on a video game system so that parents have the ability to protect their children - but this is a wholly unacceptable solution to the issue at hand.

Dear Google - I'm willing to bet that child predators use gMail, Google Voice, the Android operating system, Chrome, and your search engine to initiate and perform their dirty deeds.  You should shut down all of those services RIGHT NAOW!!!

Completely insane, isn't it?

[ejamer]

Nintendo does lie at fault in one respect: a 4-digit, numeric code isn't sufficient for parental controls.  They updated the PIN length/complexity used to protect our credit card information in the eShop; that same change should be made for parental controls.  (Try breaking an 8-digit alphanumeric code instead of a 4-digit numeric value, and you'll notice a significant increase in difficulty.)


Outside of that flaw, I don't see how Nintendo can be held accountable or why this event (as terrible as it is) should have any bearing on access to SwapNote.  Very unfortunate that Nintendo feels otherwise.

[Khushrenada]

It is sales and public perception. Nintendo has enough bad press right now with all the talk of how the Wii U is failing. The situation is much different with the 3DS obviously but what happens if there is a sudden media blow-up of children being tricked into child porn with the system. How many parents who won't have bothered to look into the system and how it works suddenly react? Will parents want to buy the system for their kids with this shadow threat of perverts being able to somehow reach out to their children with this device? Will parents who already have it for their kids suddenly want to sell the system fearing it is a hazard?

Nintendo has said the family market is a big focus of their business. While enthusiasts like ourselves know and understand how the system works, it is still stunning the amount of people who have no idea about anything game related. Just last night, I was in an EB Games (Canadian Gamestop) just browsing a bit when a call came in. One of the clerks answered and was talking to the person on the line. He went over to the Wii U section of games to find a game for the customer. The customer was looking for the Wii U version of Minecraft. The clerk couldn't find it and then asked the other clerk if they had any copies. At least the second clerk knew his stuff and said it wasn't released on the Wii U or nor was there any announcement made it was coming to the Wii U and not to expect it to happen.

This is in a shop that specializes in video games and not a Sears or Shoppers Drug Mart where it could be a bit understandable that the people working there might not be too familiar with all the different games available on each system. This is where you expect people to be knowledgeable about such products. Clearly that isn't the case either. So, it is not too surprising that rather than endure some potentially bad press and have to educate consumers as to how the technology actually works and point out that lax parenting is to blame, it is easier to just disable the application right now and figure out a new solution going forward.

The media is always looking for a scandal to sell papers or get viewers. A local TV station tried to make a big thing out of Pictochat once which some of you may remember when we derided it on this site. That's the desperation of today's media to try and find something that catches the publc's attention and they can milk for awhile. Unlike the Pictochat "scandal" that was laughable due to the limitations of Pictochat's technology, a Swapnote scandal is something that could be taken more seriously because this could be done worldwide and such trouble is, and obviously was, able to occur.

Finally, while some people have outcried this as a horrible loss and that they loved the feature, I wonder if that is true with the majority. With the Wii, I know Nintendo would ask about being able to track the system's usage. I forget if the 3DS asked me the same thing but I think it did. Regardless, it wouldn't surprise me if Nintedo was tracking every system's usage it could. If so, I expect they may have seen that the use of Swapnote had fallen quite sharply from when it was first introduced. Getting new stationary was a huge thing for awhile but it slowed down more and more. The reason may be because there was less and less interest. Thus, they may have looked at the usage and figured disabling it would be the best solution. They probably expected some negative feedback but that the majority would be indifferent to losing something they had stopped using a long time ago.

[ejamer]

Finally, while some people have outcried this as a horrible loss and that they loved the feature, I wonder if that is true with the majority. ... Thus, they may have looked at the usage and figured disabling it would be the best solution. They probably expected some negative feedback but that the majority would be indifferent to losing something they stopped using a long time ago.

This may be true, although I suspect there was a loyal audience using SwapNote even if the numbers aren't huge. It was only April this year that a pretty significant update was rolled out for the service, after all.


Anecdotal stats:
Play Time - 235:29
Times Played - 1,593
Average Play Time - 0:08


Yep... I'm probably in the minority.

[Mop it up]

I think Khushrenada sums it up well, which is why I understand why they did it. I recall seeing a news segment about the dangers of child predators and PictoChat on the DS - a completely offline application.

I still don't think I agree with the decision though.

[Ian Sane]

The era when "playing Nintendo" was used to describe playing videogames in general has had a bizarre unintended consequence.  Unfortunately for Nintendo they don't have the name value, at least in the console front, that they once did with the people that actually play videogames.  Since the Playstation, kids don't really refer to general gaming as "playing Nintendo".  But anyone that has no real familiarity with games and wants to blame videogames on something?  They sure as hell know Nintendo's name.  "Playing Nintendo" is fresh in their minds.

Now in this case there actually was some association with a Nintendo product but most of the time they get sucked in because "Nintendo" is the only brand blame-happy people seem to know.

[pokepal148]

They offer to set up parental controls to block things like this at initial boot - but if the kid got the PIN, they can easily bypass it. And it's four digits.

So instead of slapping Nintendo, I guess we have to slap the creepers.

I found the actual story for one of these cases and let's just say swapnote bypassed those controls
http://en.rocketnews24.com/2013/11/07/two-middle-aged-men-use-3ds-to-meet-assault-12-year-old-girl-ibaraki-police-say/

[ejamer]

They offer to set up parental controls to block things like this at initial boot - but if the kid got the PIN, they can easily bypass it. And it's four digits.

So instead of slapping Nintendo, I guess we have to slap the creepers.

I found the actual story for one of these cases and let's just say swapnote bypassed those controls
http://en.rocketnews24.com/2013/11/07/two-middle-aged-men-use-3ds-to-meet-assault-12-year-old-girl-ibaraki-police-say/

What do you mean, "swapnote bypassed those controls"?


Swapnote was limited based on how parental controls were configured, so it's not a software issue per se. The problem is that the girl actively disabled parental controls. Since Nintendo only uses a 4-digit pin, that's not really a big accomplishment; make it harder to crack (think something like variable 6-12 digit alphanumeric) and suddenly parental controls become much more effective.


The whole situation is gross. There is plenty of blame to go around, but Nintendo's reaction is still the wrong response to a much bigger problem.




I'm glad that Miiverse is available on 3DS now... but it's a very poor substitute for actual messaging between friends.

[nickmitch]

For everyone too lazy to read the article:

Even though the girl’s parents had used parental controls to disable the Internet access on the 3DS, she found a way to reconnect the device and go online, which led her to the two middle-aged men.

While it is not clear if this note-sharing feature was used in this case, it is quite disturbing that the two men could use the 3DS – a device often considered by parents as safe even for younger children – to lure the girl.