C’mon Nintendo. You should have known better.
You give children, teens, young adults, okay you give anybody a messaging app that allows you to send pictures, what is the first thing that will happen? Dicks. Dicks everywhere. So I am not even halfheartedly surprised that Nintendo has announced the suspension of their 3DS messaging app, Swapnote, according to a notice on the company’s website. According to Nintendo, users, including minors, have used Swapnote with SpotPass to exchange offensive material.
The statement says,
“Nintendo has learned that some consumers, including minors, have been exchanging their friend codes on Internet bulletin boards and then using Swapnote (known asNintendo Letter Box in other regions) to exchange offensive material. Nintendo has been investigating ways of preventing this and determined it is best to stop the SpotPass feature of Swapnote because it allows direct exchange of photos and was actively misused.”
The Swapnote and Special Notes services were suspended as of Oct. 31 in all regions were the service was live, barring the ability to send and receive notes using SpotPass. The company felt it was important to suspend the features due to the large number of minors who use the app, saying it wants “to provide a positive experience for all consumers and limit the risk of any inappropriate activity or misuse of a service.”
According to Nintendo, it will endeavor to highlight the system’s Parental Control features to more consumers.
