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Omegle 2009-2023

omegle.com

681–690 of 1001 posts

Re: Omegle 2009-2023

#681

This is so sad. For all the conventional reasons: the victim of the abuse deserves sympathy, and that abuse shouldn't happen. But also because we seem to be placing the blame for the abuse on the service, not the abuser. And that's sad because instead of being able to just make interesting stuff and put them online, we are being forced to consider "what's the worst possible thing that some evil bastard could use this…

The victim of this abuse had to log on to a computer each and every time they were “abused” which is lowering the bar further than I ever thought possible for there to be a victim

This is a remarkably bad take that indicates a severe lack of understanding about how abusers operate. Do better.

Re: Omegle 2009-2023

#682

This 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…

What was the relationship between StumbleUpon and Omegle. I haven't used Omegle but used StumbleUpon and was one unique place where you could discover hidden gems in the longtail.

Re: Omegle 2009-2023

#683
post #274

This 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 g…

> and what's more you can hit F5 and dismiss the entire thing, whereas a post still remains.

Which was no longer a thing, with many people using Omegle to create content and upload it to youtube. It became far less anonymous in some cases than an image/discussion board.

Re: Omegle 2009-2023

#684

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In that article she was 11 when using Omegle. She was using internet without appropriate supervision. That's almost like allowing a kid to drive a car, leading to an accident, and then trying to ban cars because they are dangerous to kids. The internet is a great place, but it's an adult place. You can find absolutely horrible (adult) things on wikipedia that a kid should not be learning about at the age of 11. And I…

Realistically, kids are on the Internet. I don't know when you were born, but my relationship to the Internet started probably around the time I was 7 or 8. My school had computers with Internet, there were two computers at home. My parents could have limited my Internet use but they couldn't have stopped me. There is not a guard standing by every computer stopping me from being Online if I am under 18 years of age.…

I've been on the internet since I was about 10 years old (I estimate). My parents knew (and understood) maybe 10% of what I did on there. As a minor, I did multiple criminal things online, some of them successful, others not so much. If I was a kid in 2023, I probably would've been arrested at some point in time.

Because of what I know about the internet and because I know what kids will do with unlimited access, I think much of this burden should be with the parents. For every successful Omegle taken down, 3 more unknown ones will pop up. But major platforms like TikTok are also massive sources of grooming and parents happily give their 10 year olds a smart phone.

As long as parents are never held accountable for their kids online behavior and the blame is put on service providers, this will only get worse. I know many examples of parents who track their kids' phones because they're scared something will happen to them in the real world. Meanwhile, these same parents pay no attention at all to where their kids venture in the online world, let alone with who. Parents need to be educated on this, fast.

Re: Omegle 2009-2023

#685
The Verge:

“Omegle gained a reputation as a breeding ground for sexual abuse of minors, leading to a prominent lawsuit “

Take any physical space that developed this reputation, it would also have been shut down by lawsuits.

Re: Omegle 2009-2023

#686

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The question in my mind is, 74 million monthly users have a good time (or not bad enough to not come back, whatever) vs the inevitable catastrophic event as you say, isn’t it well worth it to accept the risk and continue? Assuming the 74 million are really getting lots of value from it, compensating the victims of the catastrophic event is more than worth it. Holding the host liable for the harms, and trusting the…

If it's actually very rare, that doesn't seem like an appropriate way to handle a free service. Imagine a store owner downtown adding a flowerbed and a couple benches at the front of their property. If someone gets hurt via rare catastrophic event, it seems bad to make the owner pay, and even worse to suggest they're supposed to be charging bench users 20 cents each to fund payouts like this.

[dead]

Re: Omegle 2009-2023

#687

While I totally understand there's the potential for abuse, I don't think Omegle should be penalized for stuff like this. From my understanding, there's no addictive, profit-maximizing matchmaking or anything going on - it's just a service which lets two strangers talk to one another. Of course you will have bad actors target any platform, but for a lowkey site, it seems sad that they would need to shut down because…

[deleted]

Re: Omegle 2009-2023

#688

It's times like this that I become sad that the world of cryptocurrency and DAOs is so overrun with scams. So often that stuff is a solution in search of a problem. Finally we have a case where there's an actual problem to be solved wrt operating in a legal grey area, but is crypto even up to the job here if there's no obvious profit to be made? To be fair, if Omegle was operating anonymously on some sort of real-tim…

> But presumably you wouldn't be able to get an app for it in any app store

Which would also filter out all non tech savvy people, for better or worse.

Re: Omegle 2009-2023

#690

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Children shouldn't be browsing the internet without supervision. If they do I'd argue their parents should be regulated more, not the internet.

Ironic argument given the article, no? Did the author not just make a fantastic argument for structuring justice to protect rights?

I fail to see the reference. Can you elaborate?
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