Omegle Was Forced to Shut Down by a Lawsuit From a Sexual Abuse Survivor
Omegle Was Forced to Shut Down by a Lawsuit From a Sexual Abuse Survivor
Omegle connected strangers to one another and had a long-standing problem of pairing minors with sexual predators. A legal settlement took it down.
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I don't intend to victim blame or defend any abusers here; this shit is vile and should not be tolerated, period.
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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.
- 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.
This is a failure of parenting. WTF is an 11 year old doing on Omegle?
It just isn’t that simple. I’ve got four kids. At least one of them ended up watching a naked man on Omegle once. And I say this because they were in a group of friends and dared each other on, on a school trip, and they were discovered (one of them felt pretty shocked and told a teacher) and we had a big discussion with her.
Kids do dumb shit all the time. Omegle is (was) very much known about amongst them all.
So, even with careful parenting and a locked down internet, and policies not to have phones upstairs in your room, kids do dumb shit or find a new service that isn’t in your filter, because they’ve heard about it through their friends. I know because my wife and I carefully raise four kids and the internet is a fucking onslaught to a dopamine dependent, approval seeking teenager.
I’m not saying “it’s all Omegle’s fault”. Everyone had a role to play. But let’s not pretend Omegle was blameless.
You can parent your children all day long and everything is just fine at home. As soon as your kids are unleashed into the world of school, it's anything goes. Your child is immediately subjected to all the poor and awful parenting that is outside your control. The only thing you can do is give them skills to navigate those situations. Sounds like @sunbeam60@lemmy.one did just that. Bravo.
What a load of nonsense. My parents raised me right and I was disassociating from deviants from practically day one in school. Being subject to that awful parenting in other families only made me understand my own parents better.
It's almost like we should focus on educating them about how to responsibly use the Internet instead of trying to censor their access to it (which as you pointed out, basically never works).
Does anyone actually think shutting down one specific website will make a meaningful difference? Like... really? Did shutting down Napster stop piracy? Did shutting down Silk Road stop online drug sales?
Careful parenting? Everyone had a role to play?
A naked old man had to teach your kid something that you didn't. I never saw a naked old man online and my parents didn't limit internet at all.
I guess you were never invited to the lemonparty then.
I don't follow random links, that's like common sense.
Counterpoint, I clicked on many random links, and saw many things I probably "shouldn't have" as a kid/teen, still turned out alright I think.
Even on Omegle in particular, after like one day, you gotta expect the dicks and move on lol
I frequented 4chan at age 13-16 so saw pretty much everything one could see on the Internet.
I'm not going to argue it was good or bad, but it's not like it permanently fucked me up to the point of not being able to function as an adult later in life.
There's also the privacy vs protection argument here, if sites require verification that you're over 18 or w/e that then means you have to provide some sort of identification, what happens if that site is hacked? Or bad actors use that information to blackmail you in some fashion.
It's a hard situation and I don't know what the right answer truly is.
The right answer is to treat teenagers like beta testers for adulthood and let them have some autonomy when it comes to these things but only a pedophile would think like this or something.
Still, war games don't make killers, why would 4chan make antisocial loser? Just as an example. I think it's other way around, antisocial losers get exposed to 4chan the most.
This whole "x will fuck you up" thing never made sense to me. If truth makes things stop working then things never worked. It's normal to feel sick from watching a gore video, but there's something wrong with your life if it can "ruin" your life.
The way your parents raise you for first years of your life till you have something that can be called a personality basically defines everything you will do afterwards and blaming anything else just seems stupid to me.
110th comment in 8 hours.
My man is a machine. I hopped on board at about comment 60 after a pointless argument where he insists tolerant people are bad.
He might be the most prolific troll I've personally seen. I just want to see if he burns out
Hot take, this guy had a great childhood so he expects every single parent to hover over their kids so that they don't see something they aren't supposed to. Oh, and if it's an accident that's still your failure as a parent.
Man, this is an awful take.
So true, I totally wrote that I expect parents to hover over their kids despite writing complete opposite.
Nice, defend yourself to me. I have no stake in this argument but you still feel compelled to prove yourself.
Fascinating.
Trolling. You have no idea what schemes kids can invent when they're not raised like infantile retards. A 11 year old should know to be wary of random strangers it's like 6 years too late for that even. What they do with this is honestly their problem. I'm not too sure, but I don't believe that I was the only kid on this planet that didn't know that telling your home address online is stupid.
But how the hell are they saying “forced” to do something by some scumbag over the internet?
There was a group from Brazil doing stuff like that and got publicized when they were arrested recently. Usually they'd coerce the minor into sending one picture, then use it as blackmail against them to give them more. They might even gaslight them to convince them that they'll get in big trouble if they tell anyone and it'll just get worse for them.
I've seen full fledged adults taken hard by scammers and willingly giving them thousands of dollars against their own interests, and they heavily distrust and resist anyone trying to help them. I can only imagine accomplishing that with a child that lacks long term thinking skills is even more effective.
Literally a black mirror episode
children are incredibly easy to influence. "if you don't do it I will find where you live and harm your family, and do not call the cops/tell your parents" is often enough threat.
The common thing I've seen in more well -knowncases was the abuser striking up a relationship and pretending to be somebody younger, getting compromising details/photos from the victim, then threatening to release those to family/friends unless the victim follows their wishes (which often providing further sexual images/acts).
Not sure if that might be the case with a service like Omegle, but it was essentially what happened in the Amanda Todd case and other similar cases.
what if the children play Roblox and are aware of the existence of pedos, they will be more careful right?
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?
Or… close the tab?
Or click unmatch
I was in special condition where it was common sense to not trust or even lie to strangers. Some groomers would ask my address and I'd give them address of local FBI office.
God, this entire comment section is nothing but
"I'm not victim blaming, but..."
"personal responsibility"
"parents should be doing blah blah blah....no, I don't have kids."
The best parents in the world still can't control what their kids are doing every second of every day. Kids will always find ways around every single thing that's meant to restrict what they can do, see, or hear. I'm sure you never did stuff you weren't supposed to when you were a kid...right?
Yeah, and we could shut down the Internet all together... or we could be realistic about prevention.
And yes, I accessed lots of 'sensitive' material online as a kid well before this website existed. So I find it hard to blame this specific website...websites come and go. I do however absolutely blame the creep himself since they are the one who did something wrong. Not the website.
Thank you for adding just another reason for the myriad of pre-existing ones that convinced me of never having kids.
I'll do it then, I am victim-blaming. An 11 year old broke the rules and logged onto a website that she shouldn't be on and then somehow a 30 year old guy forced her to take naked pictures. The problem wasn't the website, it's this child that broke the rules and doesn't know not to do things for strangers on the internet.
Dude, the victim is literally a child.
Hence why it's easy to understand that she made this mistake. Her parents might as well sue the ISP for enabling this communication to take place.
An 11 year old child should be expected to break rules and at times end up where they aren't supposed to be. 30 year old fucking predators shouldn't be taking advantage of that.
This is like shaming a 20 year old for dressing in a gogo skirt, raping her, and then saying "she was asking for it".
No. She wasn't the problem. Your depraved ass was.
Men are fucking pigs and I don't trust the lot of you.
Source: me. A man and a father.
Sure, but shutting down the website is like shutting down the club that the slutty 20 year old dressed up slutty for and went to on the night a creep raped her. Maybe she had a fake ID (if USA at least). And yeah, perhaps the club should be more careful about fake IDs. But the club didn't rape anyone, the rapist did. And shutting down club A for club B to replace it will do nothing to prevent future rapes.
No offense to the good people in Omegle but let's be real, that site like many other of these "anonymous chat" sites are rife with people like that dude. If a website can't better control the traffic then shut it down. A night club has a bouncer and to your point can check and ID and fake or not I highly doubt an 11 year old is getting in.
Shutting down the site is a small price to pay to protect youth doing what youth are made to do which is test limits.
Nobody is doing what you're pretending, you histrionic dumbass.
Chat Roulette, the site Omegle copied the video format from, had a built in report option that would ban nude people.
So have you heard of emotional violence or exploitation? That's how that works over the internet. You don't need to be in the same room to be forced to do something if you're vulnerable.
OP addressed that already. OP is saying something akin to the following:
"A kid wanders at night alone and gets into a run down bar. She gets groped. The police shuts down the bar, everyone applauds. But what is a kid doing wandering around at night unsupervised?! Where are the parents?"
This is a bad analogy, a child can't wander into a shady bar, late at night, while at home, in their room, while doing what they can to hide their activities from their parents, in the way that they can going on an inappropriate website.
If they're going on inappropriate websites then that's their problem. I'm sure any good parent would teach their kid about actions having consequences...
I mean, realistically we all did, unless you grew up during time when there was no internet. My mother was concerned about it when she found out I had watched porn when I was 13, but nothing more. Funny thing is that my mother brough it up to my father and he was like yeah ok he's a teenager. Lmao. But here I am today, I find porn extremely boring and didn't watch it for over a decade, maybe I could have porn addiction if my parents decided to block internet over it instead.
The thing online that traumatizes me the most is the thought that people turn off kid's internet instead of teaching them how to deal with strangers properly, because believe it or not, outside world is a lot more scary than internet.
A 11 year old can know to stop replying if someone asks their home address online, same kid can get kidnapped and have it be beaten out of them in the real world.
Shield a kid from the horrors of the world, the you'll have a dumb adult in he future.
Teach your kids how to spot danger and how to handle all the world's bullshit, then you'll have a smart adult in the future.
Don't baby your kids please.
This does not get into the fine details of what happened. They could have had something going, deceitfully or not, that convinced them they had no other choice. Anyway, that wasn't the point I was making. I was pointing out that a child sneaking away to a shady bar in the middle of the night has much more serious implications of negligence than a kid going to an inappropriate website.
Bro. Analogies don't need to be 100% realistic.
How many analogies have you read involving fictional characters? Or saying stuff like "that's a catch-22"? Do you say "actually, that phrase comes from a work of fiction, so it's invalid"?
"It's like when Homer can't stop eating donuts" - "Oh but Homer doesn't exist. Checkmate!"
An ant carrying a leave is like a dude carrying three cars on his back. "Whoa! It's impossible for a dude to carry that much weight!"
Well, The shady bar thing has happened before. So it's not unrealistic and that wasn't my point anyway. It simply does not fit the situation provided in the way the poster is trying to use it. There are far, far, greater implications of negligence for a child sneaking away, to a shady bar, in the middle of the night, than there is with a kid going on an inappropriate website.
Or even the opposite analogy. A guy goes to a bar that has an ID requirement. Has a few drinks. Meets a girl. They end up having a conversation and she and he hook up.
A week later, the cops show and the guy is charged with a sex crime because the girl was under 18 even though:
- By all appearances she was of a similar age to him and consenting
- She was in a place where only adults would be expected to attend
- The ID requirement of the establishment meant that she should have been well above 18
So what's the liability of the bar, both towards allowing underage patrons and allowing them to hook up with older individuals while potentially intoxicated? Could they be sued and/or shut down? How does that story change if the bar was known to look the other way on underage patrons, or not properly check ID? How about if the girl in question was known by some of the staff? How about if the man knew that underage patrons were not uncommon.
Who has a case against the bar: the man; the girl or her parents; the police; or maybe all of them?
Nobody should applaud an establishment working under the rules and doing their best being shut down, but when that establishment has a known history of illegal activities on their platform/premises there's a case that can be built against them.
That said, the internet is not a bad, and as a globally accessible platform with no physical presence validating ID and policing users/content can be quite difficult. Hell, we see that here on Lemmy with a not insignificant number of people who engage in illicit activities or troll .
Lol no, there's literally nothing I can do to you to force you to do anything, not even to admit that your stupid opinion is nonsense.
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