Omegle 2009-2023

what is the tl;dr of the giant text wall? is it "internet bad because some kid shared a naked pic of herself" (which is the "unspeakable heinous crime" he alludes to) or is it saying people who believe in such idiocy are bad? i don't care about some php webdev from 2006's philosophy on the subject, the internet should just not be regulated, period. it doesn't even begin to make sense.

being able to freely make whatever website / internet service you want is not ultralibertarianism. it's in fact an ultrastatist standpoint that there is something about internet communication that inherently needs policing

alas, the only good willed thing on that line of thought has ever been privacy regulations, which did not fix one single thing, just made everything worse because of cookie popups. it was a completely predictable outcome for any competent engineer of software and protocols, too. and it's the consumers fault for not opting to use a simpler protocol that doesn't dox you the moment you do anything.

the US police state won when they went after napster. you all ate that up. it's likely if we ever have a free internet again it will be outlawed, while the main internet has no purpose but to serve corporate propaganda harder and harder and align it with politics like "not buying a doordash mcmeal = racist" and "wanting private browsing = pedo". you will pay a $50 fee for the very most basic thing like permission to screenshot your monitor, and anyone who tries to fight it will be more and more criminalized. statism is the problem, not """libertarianism"""

the worst thing that could happen on omegle is that a child shows herself naked. this in fact, is not the end of the world, and certainly doesn't justify some bullshit where we have to ask for permission before making a website or internet service plus photo ID for this and that party or whatever the hell you consider part of your solution.

Never used it, never knew it existed and I'm using Internet from the 1997. Seeing all the warm comments here I suppose it's like IRC for me.

Not at all contradicted by evidence in this thread. Look at the linked musicians videos in this thread, the strangers they are playing for are mostly (not entirely) 20, +/- 5 years. Like video games are mostly played by young people, even though they are popular with many age groups. Most adults who have work and families and homes and chores and hobbies don't have the time for internet hangouts which sink a lot of time for a low reward, and if they do they're likely to spend their time and money on things like NetFlix because they can afford content, compared to younger people who can't afford much. Lots of technical people hang on IRC/Slack/StackOverflow/HN/Reddit/Discord during work hours in a way they wouldn't hang on Omegle or Chatroulette during work hours - because text is easy and non-realtime, wheras Omegle requires the people hanging out on it to pay full attention if they're going to make good contacts.

No the mall isn't a good analogy, it has lights, mall cops, CCTV cameras, crowds of people wandering around, it's a well known public place and it's generally not known as a place to approach strangers unless you're selling something. Omegle happened one-to-one, private, and encouraged chatting directly to strangers.

There is a concept, I forget the name of it (not the bystander effect) where if you are in a strange place in public and need help then you can call out to the bystanders for help, or you can point to one specific bystander and ask for help. Say you are a tipsy woman lost her bag, and you call out to anyone for help then the self-interested predator can step forwards, but if you point to one person and ask them to call you a cab then you are unlikely to randomly pick the self-interested predator. So even though most people who try to help a stranger in need are good people, calling out to the void leaves a big opportunity for any bad people to take advantage of. Both can be true - that most people are good and that one arrangement leaves more room for any predators who are present than another arrangement does. Omegle had a reputation for being risqué - like DickRoulette (ChatRoulette), so that means people wouldn't tend to use it in a library, or on a family PC in the living room with other people around.

So people going on Omegle would be more likely younger because they have more free time and less money to spend on things and less ability / money to go out instead, are more likely to go on behind closed doors to avoid people seeing anything rude on their screens, then they'd get matched with a stranger, encouraged to chat with the stranger, and of course the reasonable adults matched with a young child who shouldn't be there would move on, leaving the effect above and the predators room be the ones who pretended to be friendly, and none of the protections of a crowd at a mall - well-meaning strangers ("it takes a village") could see something odd happening and interrupt or check-in.

It's not that everyone on the site was in that situation, it's that the site design and social status left that to happen way way more often than a mall or a shop bench would.