The original HN discussion of Omegle https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=539753 The site has only been featured here twice, for its birth and death.
Omegles come and go, but "how is it hacker news?" is here forever.
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Omegle 2009-2023
491–500 of 1001 posts
Re: Omegle 2009-2023
#492This 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…
I didn’t use Omegle much, but I actually met my now wife on there. We used the text only thing where a third person suggests a topic. Must’ve talked for a good 2 hours on there before exchanging informations, I shudder thinking that even the smallest glitch could have changed my life so drastically. We met 11 years ago on the platform, a completely random fluke. And while I haven’t really used Omegle in a long time,…
What was the suggested topic?
Re: Omegle 2009-2023
#493“ All that said, the fight against crime isn’t one that can ever truly be won.”
This is something that most people don’t understand and fail to accept. The human species for millennia has been fighting, stealing, rapping, killing and kept doing bad things to each other. This is in our nature and will never change. No matter how much moderation, AI checks, safety measures and good “players” exist, there will always be bad actors with new ways to abuse/misuse your service.
This is a sad fact we all need to accept :-(
Re: Omegle 2009-2023
#494It 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
The BBC went to his house, he clearly didn't want to talk, so they stayed there for hours, waiting for him to come out?
That's is an exceedingly dickish move that should be below the BBC.
Re: Omegle 2009-2023
#495“ All that said, the fight against crime isn’t one that can ever truly be won.” This is something that most people don’t understand and fail to accept. The human species for millennia has been fighting, stealing, rapping, killing and kept doing bad things to each other. This is in our nature and will never change. No matter how much moderation, AI checks, safety measures and good “players” exist, there will always be…
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Re: Omegle 2009-2023
#496> 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. I feel a bit the same, but why?
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Re: Omegle 2009-2023
#497RIP and a hearty fuck you to every bastard who helped kill it
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Re: Omegle 2009-2023
#498Omegle will be sorely missed. It was one of the last censorship-free (or perhaps more charitably, uncurated) places you could still go to. I remember the very early days of text-only mode and was using it up until very recently. Unfortunately bad actors will always try to muck up censorship-free zones, maliciously and deliberately.
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Re: Omegle 2009-2023
#499wow. i remember using omegle in 2010. the whole chat roulette craze. this guy dresses up the issue in some pretty overly dramatic and sentimental clothing… in reality this is the failure of yet another company that uses the old model. the model of the early internet where everything is free and everyone is anonymous. its just unviable and becomes less viable as the internet grows. captcha is broken… the old model is…
most significant internet growth was in the 2000s. It's not like some magical growth threshold crossed in 2010s, More and more of this audience was born internet-native too. It seems to be a cultural shift instead
Re: Omegle 2009-2023
#500The site was rife with perverts, Neo-Nazi propaganda, CSAM distribution, and honeypot operations. I think people are idealizing what it was in recent years, believing it was the same fun as in the early 2010s. It was an absolute shitshow.
The owner acts like Omegle was about innocent curious internet explorers asking cute questions and spreading knowledge. Bull shit. I never met a professor on Omegle. The most common encounter is a pervert who quickly ends the chat. I probably would have needed to sink 300+ hours on the platform in order to meet one. And by the time I would have met this professor, I would most likely have gained nothing from the exchange. Therefore, in my experience, I have found such innocent encounters to be the exception. By far. There is no corner on the internet where that happens organically. Even on HN, where comments are verbose and technical, it's only because of the perceived clout and proximity to VC money. The open connectedness of the internet has little to do with it.
If you access Tor, which is considered the peak of anonymous interconnectedness, you will also find a draught of intellectual activity. I would love to find intellectual discussions occurring on Tor, if anyone knows one please let me know the onion address. (Pro-tip: it's an impossible quest.) Instead all you will find are CSAM, scams, and honeypots.
I have found that my life has gotten immeasurably better since I generally stopped using the internet. The reddit API lockdown woke me up and I realized pretty much everything on the internet is garbage. Even HN is of lower quality than before, with the average post being a flex of one's social status rather than a helpful tip from one hacker to another.
Fuck all this noise. The internet is so full of low quality social content that it is overall not worth using for social connection.