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Omegle 2009-2023

omegle.com

741–750 of 1001 posts

Re: Omegle 2009-2023

#741

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

I volunteer in my local public school in the US. The sad fact is that stable family structure, by any definition, is collapsing and that kids are suffering. The percentage of kids in grade school who have an absent, incarcerated, addicted, mentally unhealthy, or generally dysfunctional parent is off the charts.

Parents who are unable to give their kids the tools they need to avoid getting shunted into special education on account of their behavior are in no position to supervise their online activity.

I make a habit of looking up kids parents on FB - it generally tracks that the worse the kids behavior and educational outlook, the greater the parent’s (singular in most cases) social media presence. I’m no longer surprised when I find a mother’s Onlyfans link, FFS.

Where I live a full 1/3 of 1st graders are in a special education track. All the research points to the impact of the home and family on these outcomes.

Tl;dr many parents are incapable of the rational parenting you suggest.

Re: Omegle 2009-2023

#742
post #516

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe we should create a DeFi version of this that doesn't have an owner and can't be sued. Things like Omegle should be likened to an empty grass field in the middle of town, with nobody responsible for what actually happens on it except the people who choose to be there.

This is a bad take on several levels. First the de-fi angle. You want a distributed application, no need to shoehorn crypto into there. But second and most important: the ultralibertarian angle of "you chose to be there so you take respinsabolity for whatever happens to you" is also not good. For one, there's children. For another, moderation and law enforcement is a good thing. Whatever replaces omegle will almost c…

If there is no incentive to operate the network, who will sustain the infrastructure?

If there is no cost to using the system, how do you prevent spam abuse?

This is what crypto solves. It doesn't have to be a get rich scheme, just issue tokens to those that run the network, and have users consume tokens when they send messages.

Re: Omegle 2009-2023

#743
post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it's turtles all the way down with nostalgia. And yet golden eras do occur, or so it would seem. I’m sure it’s hard to tell when you’re in or near one, which is an interesting topic in its own right, but it doesn’t mean we should dismiss outright the possibility that a passing era might just be taking something truly valuable with it.

"I wish there was a way to know you're in 'the good old days' before you've actually left them." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ujJQyhB0dws

That is actually a really useful, affirming thought exercise that I've done before. Simply take a nice present-day experience and run it through the "20 year ago nostalgia filter". Where all the boring/frustrating crap that surrounds the experience is forgotten, and just the good thing remains surrounded by the golden halo of nostalgia. It makes me appreciate the present experience more and dulls the "oh, life was so much nicer 10/20 years ago" nostalgia thing (it wasn't, it just seems that way).

Re: Omegle 2009-2023

#744

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>it doesn’t mean we should dismiss outright the possibility that a passing era might just be taking something truly valuable with it. Our youth is usually the part we're nostalgic for and nothing else. You ever hear the nostalgists crying out to go back to a "simpler time"? It's because they were children and the world is simpler for a child that lacks obligations. Fortunately, my childhood was crappy enough and my a…

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.

The news also plays a big role in this. If (in a given city/area) crime happens every day, it’s just business as usual, so nobody bothers to report on it. However, if crime happens once a year, it’s headline news.

Re: Omegle 2009-2023

#745
post #705

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? Anything on Omegle could happen in a park. Or a library. Omegle can't keep kids off their platform: their parents need to.

A park is in public view. A library is in public view. Omegle was in private, away from public view. No one needs to keep anyone off Omegle now, it is gone.

> A park is in public view. > A library is in public view.

And yet heinous acts of abuse/violence/etc have occurred in both.

By your logic, we should pave all the parks and burn down the libraries.

Re: Omegle 2009-2023

#746

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's supposed to work perfectly. That was easy. Next? But in all seriousness, age verification will soon be a legal reality. It's only "hard" because it's optional. When the government makes it required, they'll also have to make it possible - or those laws won't stand up in court. It'll probably require government issued digital IDs and MFA hardware.

How do you verify someone's age anonymously? More practically, how do you do this in a framework that works globally?

> How do you verify someone's age anonymously

No anonymity on social media sites. Not saying that's desirable - but it's the logical conclusion. You can run your own site anonymously.

> how do you do this in a framework that works globally

Lots of things work globally but are subject to local laws.

Re: Omegle 2009-2023

#747

Earlier 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…

> 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. Hard to square this assessment with the last news item I caught about the ACLU: fighting a gag order against Donald Trump on free speech grounds.

That is noble they did that and shows that they still have that element in them. I do not support Trump, and it shows objectivity to defend someone like him when his rights are infringed as they seem to be in that case.

The NY Times has covered the internal friction in the ACLU to take on more progressive causes as well. I was wrong to say they have completely strayed from defending speech absolutely but they do seem to have moved focus away. [1]

1.https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/06/us/aclu-free-speech.html

Re: Omegle 2009-2023

#748

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah, “for the children”. The best argument there is to deprive you of all the rights possible.

Really? We want to protect the rights of pedophiles? Where could this argument be going.

Right, because everyone on the internet, and who ever possibly enjoyed Omegle is either a sex abused child, or the pedophile who preyed upon them.

I had forgot, this is 2023 where there's never a middle ground in any discourse, regardless of topic. Thanks for the reminder.

Re: Omegle 2009-2023

#749

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think we're in a golden age of computer gaming right now. I remember what it was like when I was young: paying $30+ per game (many of which were flash-game quality, and I only learned how good the game was after I bought it), or endlessly scouring the internet for something free. Nowadays I can pay $5 on Steam, GoG, etc. for a game that will engross me for 100+ hours

On the flipside, is it the golden age of computing gaming or golden age of addiction? Paying $5 to be engrossed in a game for 100+ hours?

Point taken, but depending on the game it could be a better way to relax than e.g. browsing social media. I'm actually curious what people think a legitimate, cheap way to relax on a weekend or while sick is, if not gaming.
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