Don't Let Something Like The Truth Get In The Way Of Fear-Mongering

[Krell]

Contributed by Carlo on Tuesday, February 21st, 2006 @ 08:56AM
from the la-la-la-i'm-not-listening-to-you dept.

All the scare stories about MySpace seem to be contagious, with a Philadelphia TV channel now labeling the Nintendo DS as the pedophile's best friend because of the Pictochat application that lets DS users talk to each other. Of course, the whole story is predicated on a fundamental misunderstanding of how the application and the game system's wireless connections work, but the reporter found an "Internet safety expert" to repeat the errors, so they must be true -- or at least true enough to run with. A reporter getting something like this wrong certainly isn't unique; what's interesting here is that the reporter contacted another source that explained all of this, including how the system worked and how low the risk really is but apparently chose to ignore it since the story would have been far less captivating.

The application in question doesn't work over the Internet, but rather simply by connecting in an ad-hoc manner to other DS machines within 30 to 100 feet, making the likelihood of actually running into anybody using it -- let alone some sort of sexual predator -- in the wild pretty low. Of course, this "expert" talks about predators anywhere in the world using the anonymity of coffee shops to hide, making them impossible to track, oblivious to how the application works, or the fact that the WiFi on the DS can't connect to most commercial hotspots. Perhaps we're getting used to media ignorance when it comes to technology, but actively ignoring the truth is taking things a step too far.


http://techdirt.com/articles/20060221/0856202_F.shtml




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