Omegle Was Forced to Shut Down by a Lawsuit From a Sexual Abuse Survivor

1. I don't intend to victim blame or defend any abusers here; this shit is vile and should not be tolerated, period.

2. From the below, it sounds like it was determined that, despite Omegle's moderation efforts, Omegle could have done better in areas relating to age verification and matchmaking. So I'm not trying to defend or minimize Omegle's role either, I don't know the details of how the site worked but it sounds like this was a problem for a long time:

the judge in A.M.’s case found last July that Omegle’s design was at fault and it was not protected by Section 230: It could have worked to prevent matches between minors and adults before sexual content was even sent, the judge said.

1. However, I really don't like the choice of phrasing "forced", and I wonder whether that's poor paraphrasing or actually taken from the lawsuit.

Her lawsuit, filed in 2021, alleged that she met a man in his thirties on Omegle who forced her to take naked photos and videos over a three-year period. She was just 11 when it began in 2014.

Again, to be clear, not trying to say that the victim should, or even could, have done anything differently. Victim blaming is bad. But how the hell are they saying "forced" to do something by some scumbag over the internet? What kind of conditions does a kid have to be in at home to feel like they can't turn to their parent/guardian for help in a terrifying situation like that? How is an 11-year-old in 2014 being allowed to get into that situation in the first place, between her parents and her school?

It seems like this victim was failed by every support system she should have been able to rely on. This is so messed up. This is exactly why we need things like sex education and Internet safety education.

Not trying to victim blame here but what kind of idiot parent lets an underage child on the internet unrestricted. Like godam what do u think goes on online.

When do the alcoholics get to sue the bars/pubs for "forcing" them to walk through the door and order a drink?

Another good thing falls to the whims of lack of personal responsibility, parenting, and Helen (won't someone think of the children?!) Lovejoy syndrome. Now the predators will just continue to do there thing in a darker hole that is even harder to find.

In 2022, there were 608,601 reports of child exploitation on Omegle to the nonprofit National Center for Missing and Exploited Children’s CyberTipline. Of all the sites the center tracked, only Facebook, Google, Instagram, and WhatsApp ranked higher.

That's a crazy high number. Especially for a live content platform which I assume can only ever have individual reports of live interactions?

Parents fault, not the site.

I have a fundamental question about this case: was he there physically with her? Coercion is one thing, but the word "force" implies he was somehow in control. I am in no way defending him, but it reeks terribly of the "look what you made me do" vibe and I feel somewhat uneasy about how this played out.

Omegle was a piece of the internet I never partook in. It never appealed to me to talk with random internet people. Perhaps I don't understand why he had power over her.

Edit: thanks, I everyone. I get it from a subjective position.

I'm honestly surprised it took this long

Archived version: https://archive.is/0eou1

Autoplaying unrelated videos. Shit wasteful website.

I'm really confused am I supposed to have heard of this website apparently everybody haves been using it for over a decade and I feel like I'm from a parallel universe. What the hell is this website?

I wondering how much time will pass for other Omegle emerge? I mean something will fill the gap if there is business you know.

When I was a kid I dialed random numbers and made prank calls to strangers I didn’t know.

Everyone jokes about all the wild shit that happened on Omegle, but all that shit was never 'ok'.

Itt: sad and angry millennials who want to see an endless barrage of men jacking off

That's nuts! I thought that Omegle was text only. I had no idea that they paired you with people on video. WTF thought that was a good idea?!?

Sad to see internet getting regulated. At this pace there would be requirements to link all accounts , everything with government identification documents. Oh its already happening slowly.....

Next thing you know there is no more partial anonymous sites and no one can do it without major legal challenges.

Disgusting that the shutdown note tried to play off their serious issues with grooming and sexual abuse and claim they did a lot. Fuck that asshole.

Edit: Uh oh I’m being downvoted by his fan boys. The article (and successful lawsuit) say’s exactly what I’m saying and anyone who at scale enables mass sexual abuse of children is an asshole. Omegle had no other uses for most of its existence, hypotheticals sure but as the article mentions in practice it was overwhelmingly full of naked men trying to find women and children to interact with sexually. The site runner was flagrantly negligent.

Gosh I love certain types, you’ll rightly jump on a pastor who looked the other way for sexual abuse happening in his church as being responsible, yet a guy who runs a big website for years full of abuse is taken at his word as a sweet, innocent, helpless, benevolent advocate for a better web because he talks right. (Never mind he deliberately obfuscated the horrors happening on his website with his closing statement which people here ate up. It takes a lot to lose safe harbor)