361–370 of 1001 posts
The author was right on point, the government and the people moralizing want exactly what they described —- an internet fed to users, with minimal interaction. This gives more power and stability to government and those moralizing (who are currently in power). Notice the constant censorship, it comes directly from the politicians who argue “we have to remove encryption - for the children!” Arguments. Those same indiv…
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.
> 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. One aspect of this has been a constant barrage of attacks on communication services I’ve been feeling this very acutely as well, but most people I spoke…
> Omegle is the direct target of these attacks Does anyone here have any more details about exactly what types of attacks Omegle was being targeted? > 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. One…
And at the same time I do think computer providers, Windows, Mac OS and all that don't offer good enough parental control.
Age verification is a problem as well, but it's foolish to think every website and app will implement proper safeguards. I mean, Omegle could simply be replaced by some darker Russian clone with even less effort put towards fighting crime.
Instead there should be opt in. When a child user is logged in to Windows et all, an allow list should always be in place. And only apps and websites that claim to be child safe should be included.
And parents must make sure to only let their kids use child accounts.
The idea that some KYC would be forced on all online website and apps just doesn't make sense otherwise.
And now it would be fair to sue websites that claim to be child safe and have opted in, if they turn out not to be.
Somewhere along the way I feel it became normal to just let your children do whatever they want online with no supervision and no parental controls. And at the same time I do think computer providers, Windows, Mac OS and all that don't offer good enough parental control. Age verification is a problem as well, but it's foolish to think every website and app will implement proper safeguards. I mean, Omegle could simply…
Somewhere along the way I feel it became normal to just let your children do whatever they want online with no supervision and no parental controls. And at the same time I do think computer providers, Windows, Mac OS and all that don't offer good enough parental control. Age verification is a problem as well, but it's foolish to think every website and app will implement proper safeguards. I mean, Omegle could simply…
Can't say I didn't see this coming... Omegle today is very different than historically. I remember when I was much younger I would find a bot or a person just looking for sexting maybe once in 5. Now it seems that the genuine "wanna make a friend" people are 1-100. It is wild how it turned into just a horny site, and it makes me sad that it never had the opportunity for a resurgence.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
While you have a point there since certain aspects of the internet experienced by each generation were different, I think a shared part of it is just the sheer sanitization of the 'open' internet that has happened since the mid/late-2000s. That aspect is not coming back in any way for the generation growing up on the current internet, unless they go deep into techie circles to 'frontier' places like certain corners o…
>That aspect is not coming back in any way for the generation growing up on the current internet, unless they go deep into techie circles to 'frontier' places like certain corners of the fediverse or matrix, the only internet they'll know is the heavily sanitized corporate-run advertiser friendly side where everyone's walking on eggshells because a power-tripping moderator or AI has complete power over you. Is this t…
But at least with the former we still have to be a bit reserved since discord can also be pretty heavy handed with moderation. It effectively suppresses less sanitized content in the sense that if your discord grows past a certain size, it's much more likely to catch their attention. So the old internet type content we have there is mostly a handful of private discords from friends with a handful of their friends there. At that point we just ended up setting up a matrix server for stuff we'd rather not leave to the whims of discord.
VRchat has the benefit that if you aren't in public, you're free to do anything. But that does still sort of mean that you need to know the right people to get into those circles, since public is generally unenjoyable, being filled with screaming "Quest kids" (and even if they weren't screaming, it's obviously awkward to be hanging out with children as adults).
I don't know the whole story, but this seems very genuine. It echoes a sentiment I imagine many people my age feel, where the magic of the early internet we witnessed during our coming of age feels threatened. I feel for him, and hope he's able to move onto other projects which aren't as stressful.
I find it interesting that the "magical period" seems to be determined by your age. For me, the internet has already lost its magic by the time the mid 2000s came around, well before Omegle came out in 2009. For me, the magical period was the early 90s, when I was growing up. In 15 years, are people going to be talking about the current internet as the time when the magic was there? It seems more about the magic of c…
I used Omegle when it first came out and I was in college. I thought it was amazing, and lost interest in it for awhile as one is wont to do.
But I decided to check out the site again and I tried out "Spy Mode" some years ago (my late 20s or early 30s) where someone could choose a topic or ask a question and then two other random people would talk about it. It was fun and chaotic and had the energy that 2009 Omegle had again. I enjoyed it quite a bit. People would sometimes answer the topics and sometimes have their own openings and such. It was chaotic without the negative vibes of many other websites that used to be more fun.
The random matching combined with the private one-on-one conversation structure had an advantage of not having a popularity algorithm OR the ability for one person in a bad mood to derail your conversation. So aside from the moderation attempts to stop spam on the back-end, the two participants could choose what they felt was acceptable in their conversation.
Sadly, about a quarter of the topics on Spy Mode were spambots linking to questionable sites (likely related to the law enforcement quotes in the article), and when they took down Spy Mode and reverted everything just to plain chat, the spambots were almost all you could talk to with regular Omegle. (I've never used the video chat so I have no insight there)
Definitely downhill in a distinct way, and now with stricter liability for site owners that larger sites can tank with lawyers, I think it was inevitable that the whole thing was going to collapse soon anyway.
I made a few friends from there, most temporary, but one remains who I am very close to. We never would have met in real life, and honestly I don't think we would get along in person, but we talk almost every day and both our lives are better for it.
But I think that this truly is a material loss for the internet.