[flagged]
Omegle 2009-2023
271–280 of 1001 posts
Re: Omegle 2009-2023
#272Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't really see what aspect of this situation involves a false sense of victimhood, unless you are referring to the multimillionaire founder who is unwilling to add age verification to their website.
How is age verification supposed to work? I don't suppose users of the site are going to provide legal documents just to use it. It's tantamount to shutting it down. I ask because there was a similar moral outrage around age verification for access to porn sites that I recall being a big issue a while ago. I don't recall exactly how it played out in court, but it appeared to amount to nothing, which I can't help but…
age verification wouldve killed it. most legitimate users use the site because they can just open the site and start talking without sign up
Re: Omegle 2009-2023
#273[flagged]
Re: Omegle 2009-2023
#274This brings back some amazing memories. If I remember correctly, the original inspiration for Omegle came from 4chan; or more precisely, a user thought of stretching the limits of "anonymous free speech" to realtime communications, and came up with the idea in late 2007. The PoC server for it was nothing more than "telnet to this IP" and it was sporadically advertised on 4chan for a short while. Astonishingly, Google…
God, they're complaining about newposters all the way back in 2007. Is the problem really Eternal September or is it just "kids these days"?
Also Leif K-Brooks is a thoughtful person, and it bleeds into his posts
I don't know why exactly I think a one on one chat system would be different from an imageboard. When one makes a post on an image or discussion board, I think one does take into account that his words are going to be judged by the whole community. Even he isn't worried about preserving some identity, he still identifies with those words and responds to the reactions they get, and I think that ultimately leads to self-censorship and conformity. When there's only one person passing judgment, it doesn't have nearly the same negative impact, and what's more you can hit F5 and dismiss the entire thing, whereas a post still remains.Re: Omegle 2009-2023
#275I don't know the whole story, but this seems very genuine. It echoes a sentiment I imagine many people my age feel, where the magic of the early internet we witnessed during our coming of age feels threatened. I feel for him, and hope he's able to move onto other projects which aren't as stressful.
I find it interesting that the "magical period" seems to be determined by your age. For me, the internet has already lost its magic by the time the mid 2000s came around, well before Omegle came out in 2009. For me, the magical period was the early 90s, when I was growing up. In 15 years, are people going to be talking about the current internet as the time when the magic was there? It seems more about the magic of c…
While you have a point there since certain aspects of the internet experienced by each generation were different, I think a shared part of it is just the sheer sanitization of the 'open' internet that has happened since the mid/late-2000s. That aspect is not coming back in any way for the generation growing up on the current internet, unless they go deep into techie circles to 'frontier' places like certain corners of the fediverse or matrix, the only internet they'll know is the heavily sanitized corporate-run advertiser friendly side where everyone's walking on eggshells because a power-tripping moderator or AI has complete power over you.
This was something that turned out to trigger nostalgia of the 'old internet' between both me and decade older friends when exploring the fediverse, we realized that to us, the old internet was mainly defined by a stronger sense of connection/genuineness with other people's content because even if deplorable, it was mostly unfiltered. A similar feeling was evoked for me by Kagi's 'small internet' option.
So, I think the current generation might miss their 'old internet' only in the sense that by the time they're adults it'll probably have gotten even more sanitized.
Re: Omegle 2009-2023
#276Earlier quoted context omitted.
> As a young girl, Alice (not her real name) logged on to the popular live video chat website, Omegle, and was randomly paired with a paedophile, who coerced her into becoming a digital sex slave. Nearly 10 years later the young American is suing Omegle in a landmark case that could pave the way for a wave of lawsuits against other social platforms. This is fucked. We shouldn't have to put safety padding on everythin…
Yep. If the pedo found her at a walmart, would she sue walmart too? Weird people, pedos, criminals are everywhere.... parents somehow teach about "stranger-danger" offline but not online, and then blame platforms their kids use, even though they are too young to use them in the first place.
> If the pedo found her at a walmart, would she sue Walmart too?
Yes, meatspace public venues used by traffickers are frequently sued for enabling the trafficking [0], its not something unique to cyberspace venues.
[0] e.g., https://guestban.com/2023/07/12/the-unseen-side-of-luxury-ho...
Re: Omegle 2009-2023
#277This is devastating. I have so many fond memories of meeting fellow weirdos over text. The days where StumbleUpon always took you somewhere exciting, cool, beautiful, interesting, funny, or novel. Where you looked at what people did with The Web 2.0 and only marveled at the possibilities of what could come. Truly feels like the death of one of the old guard, a Usenet-of-the-2010s. I even used it during pandemic times…
> Where you looked at what people did with The Web 2.0 and only marveled at the possibilities of what could come. Truly feels like the death of one of the old guard, a Usenet-of-the-2010s. This is funny to me, because I am old enough to remember when web 2.0 was new, and people were nostalgic for 'web 1.0'. (And, of course, it's turtles all the way down with nostalgia.)
I miss the good ol’ days of Minitel. Imagine an internet made up almost exclusively of French people.
Re: Omegle 2009-2023
#278Earlier quoted context omitted.
I find it interesting that the "magical period" seems to be determined by your age. For me, the internet has already lost its magic by the time the mid 2000s came around, well before Omegle came out in 2009. For me, the magical period was the early 90s, when I was growing up. In 15 years, are people going to be talking about the current internet as the time when the magic was there? It seems more about the magic of c…
> For me, the magical period was the early 90s, when I was growing up. > In 15 years, are people going to be talking about the current internet as the time when the magic was there? I remember seeing stats/meme that you will hear the best music in your teens and early twenties. It is because in our teen years, things make big impact on us. So it is likely that the internet and other media has similar effects and toda…
I heard something similar: that nostalgia is mostly what was popular when you were 12
Re: Omegle 2009-2023
#279Earlier quoted context omitted.
They have changed their direction considerably since 2016. The cases they take on now tend not to align with an absolutist stance on freedom of speech and due process. When Trump got elected, donations poured in to them amd they made a pretty clear turn to liberal causes. I think the days that they would defend the speech of deeply unpopular viewpoints on free speech grounds are over. This is their plea for donations…
And frankly, they always had a very selective list of things they bothered to get involved in. There are a ton of civil liberties they always avoided doing anything about. But they’re mostly irrelevant anymore - the causes they’ve started going after have a thousand other non-profits doing as much for, or better now.
> But they’re mostly irrelevant anymore
The ACLU war chest has been over $400M the last few years, with many thousands of people in pretty much every state working with the organization in some capacity.
There's absolutely no evidence to support your claims that either the ACLU is irrelevant, nor that it has somehow shifted its momentum considerably since 2016 in what class of cases it handles (especially given the age of the organization and number of shifts vs. overall societal/cultural changes).
On the contrary, I can find many recent examples of legal actions spread headed by the ACLU across dozens of issues all over the country. If you can't find any it's because you're not looking, though you can start with their Annual Reports.
Re: Omegle 2009-2023
#280This brings back some amazing memories. If I remember correctly, the original inspiration for Omegle came from 4chan; or more precisely, a user thought of stretching the limits of "anonymous free speech" to realtime communications, and came up with the idea in late 2007. The PoC server for it was nothing more than "telnet to this IP" and it was sporadically advertised on 4chan for a short while. Astonishingly, Google…
>probably-too-offensive-to-the-current-generation rabbithole
4chan offensiveness isn't so much a generational thing as it is a personality thing