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MSN Cuts Unmonitored Chatrooms Around the Globe
letxa2000 writes "According to MSNBC, Microsoft will be shutting down its unmonitored chat services in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Asia and much of Latin America on October 14th--the day before MSN Messenger will lock out many 3rd party clients. Interestingly, the European manager of MSN is quoted as saying 'This is a decision based upon consumer experiences, child protection and our strategic investment to build up MSN Messenger.' It's starting to become clear that Microsoft is starting up the IM wars again and that the 3rd-party lockout indeed isn't so much about security as it is about marketshare."
There is a real moral panic underway in the UK about this now - and the attack is on all unmoderated "chat" - so even the development channel you use is at threat.
Microsoft has prepped the mainstream media that this is all about saving children from pedophile predators.
Child abuse experts were interviewed saying this actually increases the risk to children, because kids have emotional ties to their online chat friends. Now they might give mobile phone numbers and other personal data to their online friends so that they can stay in touch... and if that friend is a pedophile, he is that much closer to meeting the child.
The child abuse expert urged parents to talk to their kids about this, so the child can deal with this close down of chat rooms in a better way.
I think this is a very understandable position to take. Microsoft get lumbered with enough bad press as it is. All it takes is for one 14 year old to travel half the globe to meet a guy she was chatting to in MSN "channels" for MS to get slated for allowing this to happen.
Childrens channel moderation should not be taken lightly. Here in the UK there is a lengthy screening process for anyone who work with children, and unless MS could guarantee correctly screened moderators (screend of course in EVERY country that the channels operate) there is no way they could protect themselves from outraged public opinion.. Parents like to blame other people for not watching their children closely enough, and if a child is using a major companies message system, they have an easy target for their ire.
I personally believe any such undertaking to be ridden with obstacles, and microsoft as a "software" company are right to back away from this kind of thing
bah!*@%!
that only MSN customers can use the chat service now. This is the reason that the countries that they keep a chat service in are countries that they have MSN in. (As an ISP)
Now they know the names & credit card #'s of all the players in the chat rooms. (They actually say this in the article.) Apparently they will still have 'unmonitored' rooms, but I'd bet money that they still track specific usage.
Desperation is a stinky cologne
The European head of MSN was on the news this morning; she was singing the praises of messenger, including the highly dubious claim that "MSN Messenger is safe, because you know who you are talking to, unlike a chatroom where you can just bump into anyone". Huh ? You know who you're talking to on Messenger ? All you know is some hotmail account name; there's absolutely no guarantee that "bobby13" is indeed a 13 year old and not some drooling psychopath.
I guess AOL is happy though.
It's all very well in practice, but it will never work in theory.
I do use one IRC channel, but it's a special one on QuakeNet for a few mates who used to play Quake 2 together - never any trouble in there.
When I am king, you will be first against the wall.
My point is not that MS can stop this kind of thing from going on - as you rightly point out, people will always be able to find ways around this kind of limit. If that means that people leave, and take the spammers and pervs with them, so much the better for Microsoft, no?
If Microsoft discovers its services are being abused and finds that it can at least control or stop that abuse from continuing, don't you think they'd want to try it? And yes, I fully realise that this argument can easily be transmuted against Linux users or anyone else MS doesn't like. But in this case, again, I have to ask: what would you do?
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Death will come, and will have your eyes
-- Pavese
At luchtime, I was listening to Jeremy Vine's programme on Radio 2. This programme covers many current events things, and indeed the main topic of conversation was this MSN decision.
It was astounding how incredibly clueless the top brass of childrens charities were. In fact, the word "incredibly" is simply inadequate to describe their cluelessness - "breathtakingly clueless" would probably be a better description. They were praising MSN, and saying how this helped solve so many problems, as if MSN removing their chat feature would suddenly mean there's no such thing as Internet chat any more. You don't even need to know how the Internet works to know only an idiot would think this. You now have pent-up massive demand for chat rooms with no where to go - so guess what, just as if there was massive demand for $RANDOM_GOOD in the bricks and mortar world, someone else will set up to fulfil this massive chunk of unfulfilled demand.
As it happens, you only need slightly more knowledge of the Internet than a concussed bee to know that alternatives _already_ exist, starting with the granddaddy of them all, IRC. The only reason MSN Chat had the popularity it did was that it's the path of least resistance - for IRC you have to download a client, but I assume for MSN Chat everything's just provided. This unfulfilled demand will start downloading IRC clients no doubt (probably mIRC, so those who host mIRC downloads are probably in for the MSN equivalent of a Slashdotting).
This is the reason why we shouldn't let these people have _any_ sort of power to legislate or make changes to the Internet - their understanding is so incredibly inadequate, they shouldn't even be allowed to run a high street store, let alone be involved in Internet legislation.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
A few months ago, whenever I logged onto Hotmail there'd be adverts telling people to chat to strangers online. The person who made the most friends in a month would win a prize. Trouble brewing? You tell me.
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