Nintendo Swapnote shutdown world-wide

[mysticwaterfall]

^Nintendo has always been like that. This is the same company that didn't allow blood in Mortal Kombat until there was a huge backlash against them censoring it.

 

[calmwaters]

Holy shit dude how old are you? If you're so worried about "your" "10 year old" seeing crudely drawn dicks, then you should probably pull him out of school, because, newsflash, 10 year olds are constantly yelling about balls and drawing dicks on shit. If you think that the possibility of children seeing inappropriate things warrants taking a service down, you should probably get rid of your internet, phone service, mailbox, tv, radio, and your child's eyes. There are significantly better ways to fix this problem, like making sure your fucking kid isn't adding random strangers on their DS, using parental controls, or just, you know, monitoring your kid's electronics usage instead of demanding that the entire world act like a fucking babysitter. Jesus christ.

If anything this serves as a nice reminder that Nintendo is in the toy business these days with a minor pandering to gamers.

Y'know, if the parents would monitor their child's activity in the first place, then this shit wouldn't even happen. But of course they're just so helpless; they can't control their fucking 8/10 year old. They just sit back while their kid is hearing/seeing/doing this shit. And so then they start depending on big ass companies like Nintendo to monitor what their kids watch. Fucking lazy parenting. I never really realized how old I was, but it turns out modern parents are even worse than the goddamn hippies of the 1960s.

And yes, the possibility that children could be seeing lewd images should be removed and fixed. That's the trouble with people now: no discipline. It's perfectly obvious since 4th graders are swapping dick pictures and such.

Actually, the last sentence in your paragraph is actually the point I was trying to get across. So now you know just how old I am.

 

[nl255]

I wonder when flipnote will be discontinued as well? Even though it is third party they do have the ability to remotely delete software on their 3DS at will for any reason.

 

[Taleweaver]

Okay, I don't get this AT ALL. How the fuck can nintendo even think that they are responsible? It's not like phone companies or ISP's are responsible for what their users phone, mail, sms, skype, twitter, instagram, whatsapp, .... to each other, right?


I can get why they don't want to continue support it, but blaming it on jerks or children is just wrong.

 

[kyogre123]

I'm holding my hopes on a possible resume of the service after they come with an actual solution. Swapnote will always have a spot in my heart.

 

[Qtis]

Why not just add Miiverse type offensive image detection? It's a bit of an overreaction, but then again, Nintendo does have a large user base of underaged kids. Swapnote is probably the only place they'll ever see offensive material on the internet

 

[Bladexdsl]

nintendo people swear and do bad things...just fucking get over it!

 

[gokujr1000]

Pretty disgusting reason imo, oh well now I have an excuse to delete an app I never used anyway

 

[Dork]

Hardly a loss, since Miiverse's superior messaging system will replace it anyway.

 

[war2thegrave]

Okay, I don't get this AT ALL. How the fuck can nintendo even think that they are responsible? It's not like phone companies or ISP's are responsible for what their users phone, mail, sms, skype, twitter, instagram, whatsapp, .... to each other, right?


I can get why they don't want to continue support it, but blaming it on jerks or children is just wrong.

It's not that nintendo feels like they are responsible for this type of content.
They just don't want to give the impression to their customer base that they are.

Nintendo has put forth a lot of effort to ensure that parents believe that nintendo makes a good electronic babysitter.
That is all underminded once a typical parent looks down at their 5 year olds' "nintendo" and sees curse words and
penis pictures. The parent isn't going to care that this "offensive" material was posted by another user and not directly
by nintendo. All they care about is that their child was looking at curse words and penises on "the nintendo" and they
will tell all of their friends and co-workers about all of the "smut" they found on "the nintendo" because that's a lot
more interesting to talk about than what happened on american idol the night before.

 

[Wolvenreign]

Man, if I knew Nintendo was going to shut this down earlier, I would've made WAY more porn involving Nintendo characters on SwapNote.

 

[Taleweaver]

It's not that nintendo feels like they are responsible for this type of content.
They just don't want to give the impression to their customer base that they are.

Actually...with this move, they DO give the impression that they are responsible. And not in a mild suggestive way either. On the contrary: they downright claim to take responsibility.

Nintendo has put forth a lot of effort to ensure that parents believe that nintendo makes a good electronic babysitter.

I'll admit parents of young children are their main sales target, but this statement is overstepping it wildly (if you have proof, I'm very interested in reading it).

I don't think anyone at nintendo thinks the main reason of their handheld/console is to keep his/her children occupied, let alone that it would be their selling strategy. Of course they're aware that some parents do exactly that, but again: I don't think they're catering to them.

That is all underminded once a typical parent looks down at their 5 year olds' "nintendo" and sees curse words and
penis pictures. The parent isn't going to care that this "offensive" material was posted by another user and not directly
by nintendo. All they care about is that their child was looking at curse words and penises on "the nintendo" and they
will tell all of their friends and co-workers about all of the "smut" they found on "the nintendo" because that's a lot
more interesting to talk about than what happened on american idol the night before.

There will always be this sort of situations. And there are plenty of ways to avoid this* without shutting down the service entirely. Parental locking or removing it with the next firmware upgrade but having it free of charge in the eshop would work just as well.


*okay, okay: there will be plenty of ways to do damage control. Some parents are just too stubborn NOT to buy GTA V for their child, and then complain about poor service to exactly the same people who strongly advised against the purchase.

 

[raulpica]

Nintendo confirmed for five year old children!

At least this is better than going on XBLA's Uno and see penises everywhere.

 

[chartube12]

I'm guessing pedophilia was involved here. Maybe not actively between adults and youth but probably youth exchanging with youth like sexting which is illegal at least as far as I know in the US and the UK.

This sucks because I had a couple people I would exchange gaming related photos with and had a blast doing so. Always takes some idiot kids to mess up something good. Oops.. look where I am.

Sexting is actually legal in the US between people who are in the same age group. However sending nude pics of yourself when you are not an adult is illegal. People often assume both are illegal because more often than not, the sex-text contains pics. My uncle is a cop and we hear the crazy shit people try and get away with.

 

[Ace]

I recall parental controls being heavily featured pre-launch for both 3DS and Wii U, especially when the booths appeared in game stores in town.

IMHO, there's no excuse to not use parental controls if you're worried about questionable content for children. It's like not thinking before handing a kid a loaded gun, then blaming an incident with the gun to the manufacturer.

A way I could see this being fixed would be to legally enforce parental controls on gaming devices, while simultaneously showing clearly that the burden of using parental controls lies strictly with the parents: as such, any online content that can use parental controls will be strictly unrated (just like before), and any outstanding accusations Nintendo have regarding 'children exposed to questionable content' will be dropped

 

[EgoTrip]

Yay more censorship and restrictions on freedom by a corporation. Fair enough they own Letterbox/Swapnote and can do what they want with it really. But its still overkill, ruining it for everyone when what really is going on in the whole is just a bit of fun.

Rude messages and pictures are nothing new. I've received one myself by a very immature individual. But I can clearly remember at school we were all doing the same sort of shit, drawing dicks on walls, textbooks, and stuff. The only difference then is that the internet was in its infancy and few people had devices to send stupidity to. But you can bet if there was, we would have done the same thing back then. Its just kids (and immature idiots) being kids (and immature idiots). And you can also bet that the very same people censoring this shit did the same when they were younger too.

It really does my head in how people always blame modern technology for stuff that's gone on since the beginning of time. And they have to force a corporation to take responsibility for their bad parenting and hypocrisy too.

 

[ProtoKun7]

These services were shutdown at 7:00 PM on October 31, 2013, in all regions.

Not all regions.

Here it was shut down on the 1st of November at 02:00.

On another note, silly little children.

 

[Ashtonx]

friend codes weren't enough to keep everyone safe ? ;/

Seriously nintendo wake the fuck up and make a proper online network, it's the only console manufacturer that still fails at it.

 

[Gahars]

The government should shut down the US Postal Service immediately. I mean, I could send pictures of my spanky wanky ringadingaling through their service! Won't somebody think of the children (and not in that way, you perverts)?

 

[minexew]

Why not just add Miiverse type offensive image detection? It's a bit of an overreaction, but then again, Nintendo does have a large user base of underaged kids. Swapnote is probably the only place they'll ever see offensive material on the internet

Damn, that article is hilarious.

Kurisu: Ahem, uh. Some users would take to drawing penises.
Everyone: (laughs)
Kurisu: Well, it’s true. It seems to be more of a phenomenon found in the west.