Neopets Chat PSA

[Musical_Shoyru]

I wanted to make a few people aware of this in case people didn't know, but I believe that it is important enough information for people, especially those that use the boards.

Neopets has changed a bunch of their chat rules, or rather are starting to enforce things more harshly as to what you can and cannot talk about. According to this post here; many users have been reporting getting warnings & bans/freezes for discussing non-neopets related things after TNT had allowed such chats in the Newbie Board on the Neoboards. 

The Newbie Board/Chat use to be a pretty big space for general chatting between users and has been that way for a couple of decades now. If you scroll down a little bit further in the above mentioned post you can see more detailed information. To paraphrase; Neopets is owned by a company called Netdragon who has a CEO who is an AI and it recently deleted the accounts of Adam and Donna who were the LITERAL creators of Neopets, shortly after that the Newbie Board got re-vamped/changed to "New to Neopets" and a "General Discussion" board was put up that users have been asking for a while for. Excited to see this board up many user went over to it and began posting away. About a day later TNT makes up a new rule with no official warning that we cannot talk about anything none related to neopets on the boards, including non-neopian related clothing and food! If you even so much as mention a hat it must be a neopets hat. This is an ACTUAL example given by a staff member Alice, which I will post a screenie of below. They then began freezing & issuing warnings to people that posted non-neopet related things on the board called general discussions. After days of people contacting TNT wondering why the warnings, bans, etc were happening they FINALLY made an announcement saying; no non-neopets talk is allowed on ANY of their boards & that they started freezing & warning people on the newbie chat for posts that were made days before the rules changed & this is all because neopets wants to be 100% child friendly. (Yet they're selling wine glasses in the merch shop, have had irl events at bars and many not-so-child friendly items, references and events LOL)

I don't really know what this means for guilds or personal DM's as the message from Alice does specifically say "OUR BOARDS", so guild may still be safe for general discussion as although they are on neopets, they're not official boards, but I am not sure if this is actually the case. Same goes for DM's, I would hope/assume they are, but I have no real idea or any way to really know. I just know that this will cause a lot of people to move to chatting offsite for sure. (If they weren't ALREADY doing that.)

[Secre]

Well, that's going to make the Altador Cup even more tedious than normal, isn't it?? 

The team chats are full of off-topic nonsense inbetween scoring and suchlike. I remember having a full discussion about what we did whilst also playing endless SOSD last year that divolved into a full book recommendation list...

Are they trying - I mean, really, actively trying - to destroy the site? I don't spend much time on the boards admittedly, but many of those who do are the most committed long standing players. Why are they trying to chase them away!?

And child friendly until we look at the NC Malls Gatcha mechanics with capsules. Spend a fortune to not necessarily get the items you want and gamble on a low chance of getting the special edition item. Exactly how is that child friendly??

[Musical_Shoyru]

19 minutes ago, Secre said:

Well, that's going to make the Altador Cup even more tedious than normal, isn't it?? 

The team chats are full of off-topic nonsense inbetween scoring and suchlike. I remember having a full discussion about what we did whilst also playing endless SOSD last year that divolved into a full book recommendation list...

Are they trying - I mean, really, actively trying - to destroy the site? I don't spend much time on the boards admittedly, but many of those who do are the most committed long standing players. Why are they trying to chase them away!?

And child friendly until we look at the NC Malls Gatcha mechanics with capsules. Spend a fortune to not necessarily get the items you want and gamble on a low chance of getting the special edition item. Exactly how is that child friendly??

Yeah I'm with Faerieland and we always talk about stuff like that too around AC season. Heck there's even the premium boards which is a bunch of nonsense and the word associate game that goes on both on premium and regular boards.


They also have encouraged players to go on reddit too, even though you can't talk about reddit on the site. They made a "Sorry Mommy Sorry" meme on their official Tik Tok (which is highly inappropriate), can look at the comments on that one with people getting upset and saying "I'd get frozen for saying this on the boards". I mean even the april fools joke this year! Plot about staff members being brutally murdered, got neopets that eat other neopets, items that are highly questionable xD There's been board that have also been allowed to stay up (PUBLIC BOARDS) about BDSM and the like. So I don't really know what they're doing. I've been a huge supporter of Neo and still will be around, but at this point I mainly stay for the nostalgia and for the people I've met along the way. I like to give the staff some slack cause I know their a small team with a HUGE player-base, I mean even after the possible AC soft-bans/shadow-bans last year, NFT and data leak scandal, I still was like "let's not be so harsh guys, the main neo team didn't want the NFT's" but it's like come on guys, I'm trying to give ya the benefit of the doubt, throw us a bone LOL

Today's news post is even telling people to go onto the reddit. O.o

[Secre]

9 minutes ago, Musical_Shoyru said:

Yeah I'm with Faerieland and we always talk about stuff like that too around AC season. Heck there's even the premium boards which is a bunch of nonsense and the word associate game that goes on both on premium and regular boards.


They also have encouraged players to go on reddit too, even though you can't talk about reddit on the site. They made a "Sorry Mommy Sorry" meme on their official Tik Tok (which is highly inappropriate), can look at the comments on that one with people getting upset and saying "I'd get frozen for saying this on the boards". I mean even the april fools joke this year! Plot about staff members being brutally murdered, got neopets that eat other neopets, items that are highly questionable xD There's been board that have also been allowed to stay up (PUBLIC BOARDS) about BDSM and the like. So I don't really know what they're doing. I've been a huge supporter of Neo and still will be around, but at this point I mainly stay for the nostalgia and for the people I've met along the way. I like to give the staff some slack cause I know their a small team with a HUGE player-base, I mean even after the possible AC soft-bans/shadow-bans last year, NFT and data leak scandal, I still was like "let's not be so harsh guys, the main neo team didn't want the NFT's" but it's like come on guys, I'm trying to give ya the benefit of the doubt, throw us a bone LOL

Today's news post is even telling people to go onto the reddit. O.o

Oh, I'm definitely around for the nostalgia now. I had a long hiatus and came back during COVID and lockdowns in 2020. Spent a small fortune on the site - I'm really not joking. I went from virtually no NC to most of my wishes complete and a trading list that still makes me wonder how much I really spent... (http://impress.openneo.net/user/44099-Secre/closet). I spent hours on the site collecting 100k from Flash games Monday to Friday. Managed All-Star 2020, Double All-Star 2021 and then started to lose interest in 2022 only managing level 14.

Now... I spend months without playing and even when I am 'active' like now, it's mostly half an hour for dailies and occasional NC trading. There just isn't much to do on the site and it's boring. With that in mind, why oh why are they restricting one of the few areas of the site that actually works further!?

I'm clearly out of the loop as I just found the Sorry Mummy Sorry thing stupid when I clicked on it. Not sure I want to Google it to find out why it's inappropriate though!

... You aren't even meant to have a Reddit account until you are 13 years of age. So how is linking it child friendly!?

Oh, TNT have been making bad decision after ban decision lately. NFT's aren't really their fault. But the chaos of the AC, games that hadn't been fixed since the previous year when they were broken, rampant cheating and shadow bans definitely were. As is the new policy of requiring access to the ORIGINAL email used to set neopets up if you can't gain access to your account. Even my BANK doesn't require that and my bank has my actual pay cheque being deposited into it! People set accounts up as children. They used parental emails, discarded emails, emails that have long since been defunct as the server that hosted them no longer exists. If they have updated their account settings, then the current email is what should be required. Then you have the lack of events (Charity Corner), broken promises (Premium sale)... and now this.

It's seriously like they want to destroy the site.

[GillyTook]

I can half see the email, since a hacker might change it, buuut on the other hand, as you said, a lot are defunct now.  Maybe last one before you/a hacker changed it to the current would be a good compromise?  

I never use the boards, or rarely have (think I've had a half dozen posts on them ever?) so can't comment, but sheesh.  Give the adults an off-topic board with a password or something?  Or like an age restriction of some sort?  If youtube etc. can do it, you'd assume they could.  Even if some kids got in and parents freaked, they can say they made a good faith effort.  Also here for nostalgia XD   Especially since they seem to not care about the games, and I'm STILL upset about the way the newly improved mobile site looks when I use a computer for everything.  Ugh.

The owner of the company is an AI?  REALLY?  I hadn't heard that.  

[Musical_Shoyru]

2 hours ago, Secre said:

Oh, I'm definitely around for the nostalgia now. I had a long hiatus and came back during COVID and lockdowns in 2020. Spent a small fortune on the site - I'm really not joking. I went from virtually no NC to most of my wishes complete and a trading list that still makes me wonder how much I really spent... (http://impress.openneo.net/user/44099-Secre/closet). I spent hours on the site collecting 100k from Flash games Monday to Friday. Managed All-Star 2020, Double All-Star 2021 and then started to lose interest in 2022 only managing level 14.

Now... I spend months without playing and even when I am 'active' like now, it's mostly half an hour for dailies and occasional NC trading. There just isn't much to do on the site and it's boring. With that in mind, why oh why are they restricting one of the few areas of the site that actually works further!?

I'm clearly out of the loop as I just found the Sorry Mummy Sorry thing stupid when I clicked on it. Not sure I want to Google it to find out why it's inappropriate though!

... You aren't even meant to have a Reddit account until you are 13 years of age. So how is linking it child friendly!?

Oh, TNT have been making bad decision after ban decision lately. NFT's aren't really their fault. But the chaos of the AC, games that hadn't been fixed since the previous year when they were broken, rampant cheating and shadow bans definitely were. As is the new policy of requiring access to the ORIGINAL email used to set neopets up if you can't gain access to your account. Even my BANK doesn't require that and my bank has my actual pay cheque being deposited into it! People set accounts up as children. They used parental emails, discarded emails, emails that have long since been defunct as the server that hosted them no longer exists. If they have updated their account settings, then the current email is what should be required. Then you have the lack of events (Charity Corner), broken promises (Premium sale)... and now this.

It's seriously like they want to destroy the site.

It pretty much is talking about a female having LARGE, erm, assets on her body and guys going up to them calling them "Mommy". So like something like "When your girl has a nice *insert slang here/term here*". It's not the worst, but definitely not kid friendly. I had also gone on their tiktok today and saw the "These are my ladies..." sound for paint brushes they used, which is from the movie Surf's Up, which kind of has some innuendo to it as well xD

1 hour ago, GillyTook said:

I can half see the email, since a hacker might change it, buuut on the other hand, as you said, a lot are defunct now.  Maybe last one before you/a hacker changed it to the current would be a good compromise?  

I never use the boards, or rarely have (think I've had a half dozen posts on them ever?) so can't comment, but sheesh.  Give the adults an off-topic board with a password or something?  Or like an age restriction of some sort?  If youtube etc. can do it, you'd assume they could.  Even if some kids got in and parents freaked, they can say they made a good faith effort.  Also here for nostalgia XD   Especially since they seem to not care about the games, and I'm STILL upset about the way the newly improved mobile site looks when I use a computer for everything.  Ugh.

The owner of the company is an AI?  REALLY?  I hadn't heard that.  

Don't believe it's THE owner, but have heard that ONE of the CEO's is an AI, mainly from posts off set, but I'm not entirely sure how accurate that is due to it being information I've found offsite, but I'm sure some digging into Netdragon would yield some results.

[Aranel]

I would be really interested to know what the average Neopets user's age is. I'm guessing it's mostly adults. (But then again, maybe that's just who I associate with.) Regardless, this decision makes approximately zero sense; the rules that were already in place about what you could and couldn't discuss on the boards seemed sufficient to me to keep things from getting "too" "real-life".

I was so excited that TNT has started to be more openly inclusive and mindful of LGBTQ+ people and disabled people. But this feels like a HUGE step backward.

And how is it more "child friendly" to punish people for talking about absolutely anything non-NP-related? I feel like a rule like that is harder for kids to follow than adults.

 

I cannot for the life of me figure out how to edit my previous comment, so please forgive the double comment. Am I missing something obvious?

But I wanted to add this screenshot I JUST took.

The white highlight is how it's normally displayed; I added the red line for emphasis. So... what IS the truth?

[Mouseykins]

9 hours ago, Aranel said:

I would be really interested to know what the average Neopets user's age is. I'm guessing it's mostly adults. (But then again, maybe that's just who I associate with.) Regardless, this decision makes approximately zero sense; the rules that were already in place about what you could and couldn't discuss on the boards seemed sufficient to me to keep things from getting "too" "real-life".

I was so excited that TNT has started to be more openly inclusive and mindful of LGBTQ+ people and disabled people. But this feels like a HUGE step backward.

And how is it more "child friendly" to punish people for talking about absolutely anything non-NP-related? I feel like a rule like that is harder for kids to follow than adults.

 

I cannot for the life of me figure out how to edit my previous comment, so please forgive the double comment. Am I missing something obvious?

But I wanted to add this screenshot I JUST took.

The white highlight is how it's normally displayed; I added the red line for emphasis. So... what IS the truth?

Yep, you were missing the obvious three dots in the right corner of your post. I merged them for you.

I'm actually quite shocked by this news and I agree Aranel, what is the truth here? I think only time will tell. I'm barely on the neoboards during the AC off-season. If they're making a general chat board, I'm sure teams could make a general chat board there too and still have the main scoreboards and such.

[Secre]

14 hours ago, Aranel said:

But I wanted to add this screenshot I JUST took.

The white highlight is how it's normally displayed; I added the red line for emphasis. So... what IS the truth?

4 hours ago, Mouseykins said:

I'm actually quite shocked by this news and I agree Aranel, what is the truth here? I think only time will tell. I'm barely on the neoboards during the AC off-season. If they're making a general chat board, I'm sure teams could make a general chat board there too and still have the main scoreboards and such.

So having done some extra sleuthing on Facebook and Reddit, it looks like both are true. The team did indeed make it so you couldn't discuss anything non neo related and there were a couple of days where staff were warning and silencing players. However the backlash has been (predictably) severe and they have walked the policy back pretty quickly and the description has also been changed. There was also a certain amount of passive aggressive 'word but not spirit of the rule' keeping with people very obviously finding neo words to describe real life things.

16 hours ago, GillyTook said:

I can half see the email, since a hacker might change it, buuut on the other hand, as you said, a lot are defunct now.  Maybe last one before you/a hacker changed it to the current would be a good compromise?  

The problem is that there are so many better ways and no other site uses the idea that you need the 'original' email because it just doesn't work. People change emails, servers get deleted. Over time, the average adult may keep their email but children certainly don't and many people created accounts in childhood! Even with adults though, there are some things I've used a work email to set up and no longer have access to the work address because I no longer work there! 

The previous policy was that you had to know what the original email was - still iffy given people may have been like 7 when they opened accounts, but more doable. Now you actually need to send an email from the account... which has a reasonable chance of being defunct. 

[bonnie_morrison]

yeah, I definitely don't have the original e-mail I used, I only used it for neopets and had issues with it, so it's long gone. I don't go on the boards very much anyway only when there's an issue happening and I check to see if it's just me or other people are reporting it.

[GillyTook]

@Mouseykins When I click the three dots on top of my post, it only shows report/share options.  Maybe a bug?

@Secre Yeah.  That's why I thought perhaps the last safe one they knew of?  Or as you've said, plenty of other sites can do it without.  I am definitely not the most knowledgeable in this area, though, so I have no idea what would be better.  

[Aranel]

18 hours ago, Mouseykins said:

Yep, you were missing the obvious three dots in the right corner of your post. I merged them for you.

My only options under those three dots are "Report" and "Share", same as @GillyTook. Thank you for merging them for me!!!

 

[Duskitty]

I'd really like to see them try and enforce the "no non-Neopets talk whatsoever" rule in the long term. Thoroughly enforcing this rule will require constant around-the-clock moderation, something I highly doubt they have the manpower or time for.

The fact that Adam and Donna's accounts have been disabled is really upsetting, though. Is there any further context on why they did that? Were Adam and Donna involved in this decision at all?

[berriganify]

Yeah the email thing is dumb. I still have the original email for mine, but it's by far my oldest, and is now relegated as my go-to email for anything sketchy, with everything else being migrated over to newer emails. Which, uh, is not great for my account security. (Mind you, give Neopet's data security, maybe it belongs on this email after all?)