351–360 of 1001 posts
> Omegle is the direct target of these attacks Does anyone here have any more details about exactly what types of attacks Omegle was being targeted? > In recent years, it seems like the whole world has become more ornery. Maybe that has something to do with the pandemic, or with political disagreements. Whatever the reason, people have become faster to attack, and slower to recognize each other’s shared humanity. One…
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Seems to me there is an obvious qualitative difference between a company that manufacturers cars or kitchen knives and a company that creates a service that uses random matchmaking to repeatedly introduce a serial pedophile to unsuspecting underage victims. Sure, people _can_ abuse any service, this seems like a service that wasn’t just ripe for abuse, it was essentially perfectly designed to enable it. Moreover in t…
What ways could've headed off abuse thar wouldn't have defeated the entire purpose of the service - matching random people with each other?
In hindsight the entire purpose of the service was a bad idea, absent minimal efforts to avoid its trivial weaponization by users with an obvious motive for using the means and opportunity the service was providing by design.
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> But also because we seem to be placing the blame for the abuse on the service, not the abuser. Blame is not exclusive or zero-sum, and while there is obviously blame being placed on the service, I don't see any evidence that blame is not being placed on the abuser (or that less blame is placed on them than would have been if blame wasn't placed on the service as well.)
When there's money involved, blame always gets placed on the deepest pockets that can be found, which is almost never an individual person. If I spill a soda on the floor at Walmart and someone slips on it, they're going to sue Walmart and probably not me.
The individual abuser was located, arrested, criminally convicted, and sentenced to 8.5 years of prison and 20 years of restricted supervised release.
Many would consider that a significant form of blame.
It seems the real reason this lawsuit found traction while similar ones against much larger platforms is precisely because Omegle sounds like a fairly shoestring operation. Platforms with an army of lawyers can surely fend lawsuits like this off without batting an eye. Apparently Omegle doesn't have an army of lawyers.
OP doesn't mention anything about a lawsuit - got more information on that? EDIT: https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-64618791
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It seems the real reason this lawsuit found traction while similar ones against much larger platforms is precisely because Omegle sounds like a fairly shoestring operation. Platforms with an army of lawyers can surely fend lawsuits like this off without batting an eye. Apparently Omegle doesn't have an army of lawyers.
> It seems the real reason this lawsuit found traction while similar ones against much larger platforms is precisely because Omegle sounds like a fairly shoestring operation. Platforms with an army of lawyers can surely fend lawsuits like this off without batting an eye. Platforms with an army of lawyers would never greenlight Omegle's basic behavior, to start with.
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It's horrible that this happened and obviously I'm glad the pedophile is in jail, but how exactly was she "coerced"? And how is any of this Omegle's fault?
> how exactly was she "coerced"? Yeah no this is a terrible take. She was coerced by being an 11 year old talking to a grown adult. How do you think she was coerced?
I 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…
For me it was yahoo chat rooms that filled the need, this omegle founder had created to solve.(at least till it got filled with bots) The real question is what will a teenager/(mostly exploration instinct person) today will use and will they even be able to anonymously talk to a stranger to share perspectives??
I don't know, perhaps because I have passed the majorly exploration instinct stage due to life's responsibilities and commitments, but I sometimes worry, that there's no such tool anymore.
Just about anyone or anything can be taken down with the pairing of q woman willing to publicly claim abuse, with no proof required beyond her word, and a lawyer willing to take the case.
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> optics Didn’t they used to specifically and notably not care about this? See ACLU defense of neo nazi march.
They sure did, but they've changed. They helped obtain permits for the "Unite the Right" rally in Charlottesville, which devolved into a MAGA riot that ended with a white supremacist murdering one protestor and injuring 35 others. Since then the ACLU has become far more squeamish about their clients and has been willing to compromise on their historical principles. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/05/ac…
> It should be monomaniacal and universally despised.
Never thought I’d get whiplash just from reading a comment on Hacker News.