721–730 of 1001 posts
Sad to hear that the platform is shutting down due to lawsuits. It doesn't make much sense to change the speed limit of a street where kids run around unattended in the middle of the night. Sad to hear the instances of abuse even more though.
TCPIP Omegle
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> we are living in a golden age I would've agreed pre-covid.
Does COVID still exist meaningfully in your part of the world? In my country the first few waves were very strong, but after a successful vaccination campaign (among other things) COVID has completely disappeared in everybody’s daily lives.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Our brains form largely on the basis of neurons talking and connecting to strangers. This is nonsense. Our neurons don’t talk to strangers. They talk with other neurons from the same individual. There is more in common between any two connected neurons than between two family members. And besides there is no reason to think that what happens between cells is a good model to base human behaviour on whatsoever.
you're taking a metaphor overly serious. Socialization is important (we have decades of documentation on how you can permanently damage a brain in mere weeks of solitary confinement), and we can't nor shouldn't have to base that socialization with the same relatives for your entire life. If only because we biologically have urges to reproduce and are aware enough of biology to know that family reproduction is a horri…
I just point it out that it is a bad one.
> Socialization is important.
Yes.
> we have decades of documentation on how you can permanently damage a brain in mere weeks of solitary confinement
Yes.
> and we can't nor shouldn't have to base that socialization with the same relatives for your entire life
Yes.
see how easy it was to write it without asserting falsehoods about neurons, and without drawing unsupported conclusions from said falsehood?
A metaphor can be faulty even if the conclusion it purports to end up with is true. And if we can do away without the obscuring metaphor (as you did in this very comment I'm responding to) then we should.
Gives me chills, that was so heartfelt and raw. Hurt on all sides, but this is a bit like losing access to a public space because someone committed crimes there. One of the greatest things Omegle enabled is this... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HhzHV9QD0Is (Harry Mack freestyling for random Omegle matches, it was a series of 90+ episodes and brought me and others so much joy during COVID)
More specific information about why its closing down are lawsuits of groomed minors. press coverage of 1 case: https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-64618791
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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.
More specific information about why its closing down are lawsuits of groomed minors. press coverage of 1 case: https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-64618791
Ah, “for the children”. The best argument there is to deprive you of all the rights possible.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's also whatever is removed in time because people simply forgot about it. It's a constant discourse in my country to think of today as "dangerous" and idealize some earlier decades where you'd "leave the door open" while by all metrics crime was actually higher. We just collectively forgot about it. That's one of the reasons every age and culture has a golden age/arcadia/Eden mythology.
>It's a constant discourse in my country to think of today as "dangerous" and idealize some earlier decades where you'd "leave the door open" while by all metrics crime was actually higher. This highlights a great point about past media. Films like The Warriors, Class of 1999, and even A Clockwork Orange play into this notion that juveniles have become worse and worse and we can expect a hellscape from future generat…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Even a non-golden era can have something truly valuable. Btw, we are living in a golden age. The vast majority of humanity has never had it better.
That's a bit simplistic. If you haven't noticed, advanced economies are experiencing secularly stagnating growth, a crisis of democratic representation and its populist backlash, the return of oligarchic inequality to levels not seen since the gilded age, and extreme social atomisation and mental health breakdown. We are also all hurtling towards catastrophic climate change, an AI revolution that could lead to genera…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> a bit like losing access to a public space It's more like losing access to a bar that allowed random people to meet in private rooms, and didn't check they weren't giving access to minors, and didn't check inside the private rooms to prevent sexual abuse.
And so now they’ll have to choose one of the other, even seedier bars. The kids aren’t any better off. You’ve made a poor analogy, though, since obviously it’s very trivial for a bar to validate age at the door. If such a thing were easy for Omegle to do, I’m sure they would.
This bar also had special partitions in each room that were practically indestructible, allowing sound and light through but protecting from physical harm.
[EDIT: I don't mean to imply that the check is easy! The reality of Omegle's difficulties is understood. I'm just riffing on the metaphor]