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Omegle 2009-2023

omegle.com

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Re: Omegle 2009-2023

#611

Post by concordDance »

terryf wrote: post #532
adamomada wrote: post #133

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? The world couldn’t possibly function any other way

Yes, 100 times yes. This is one of the big issues with the modern world, that no risk at all is acceptable. And that's bullshit. So many things that are enormous amounts of fun can get shut down because maybe someone gets slightly hurt some time or whatever. Should we make things safe? yes, of course. But the trade off should not be "if there is any risk at all, then no". It should be made clear that risk exists and…

The big issue here is that us monkeys really can't comprehend scale (insert classic links to studies on scope insensitivity here). Heuristics that work well for groups of up to a few thousand people stop working when there are hundreds of millions.

There is genuinely and honestly a number of days of people chilling on the beach with their family that is worth a life (or more accurately, shortening a life by ~50 years), and it's probably less than a million.

Re: Omegle 2009-2023

#612

Post by patates »

SnooSux wrote: post #333
ijustlovemath wrote: post #198

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…

Stumble Upon used to be so addicting

Not exactly the same experience but close enough for me: https://search.marginalia.nu/explore/random

Re: Omegle 2009-2023

#613

Post by concordDance »

dragonwriter wrote: post #317
adamomada wrote: post #133

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? The world couldn’t possibly function any other way

> 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…

The issue here is that the host is capturing only a very small fraction of the value here, which may not be enough to cover liability.

Re: Omegle 2009-2023

#614

Post by alphager »

dheera wrote: post #558
andrepd wrote: post #525

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> You want a distributed application What would incentivize a huge number of people to run a decentralized and distributed application so that it actually continues to run? (Hint: the hope of a coin mooning)

The usefulness of said application. The fun of being part of it. Getting rid of the feeling of sadness expressed by many of the comments here.

If the only human motivation factor you know is monetary, I deeply pity you.

Re: Omegle 2009-2023

#616

Post by DonHopkins »

chx wrote: post #437
eru wrote: post #419

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.

> we are living in a golden age I would've agreed pre-covid.

COVID is what saved us from four more years of Trump (and perhaps many more after that of his family and Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell and Steven Miller and Steve Bannon and the list goes on and on...).

Re: Omegle 2009-2023

#617

Post by jacquesm »

amatecha wrote: post #520
justsid wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn’t use Omegle much, but I actually met my now wife on there. We used the text only thing where a third person suggests a topic. Must’ve talked for a good 2 hours on there before exchanging informations, I shudder thinking that even the smallest glitch could have changed my life so drastically. We met 11 years ago on the platform, a completely random fluke. And while I haven’t really used Omegle in a long time,…

No way! That's awesome. You should reach out to the creator of the site and let him know about this (if you haven't already). He'd probably be super happy to hear this story :)

Any platform that is large enough will sooner or later become a 'slice of life'. I've seen this with ww.com/camarades.com, and it was fascinating to see that development up close.

One of the most memorable ones for me was a terminally ill patient in a hospital that was still conscious that used our fledgling video meeting service to stay in touch with family members all over the USA. And random strangers dropping in to wish them well. Some people would protest that this wasn't material that should be shown online but I always defended such uses because (1) it seemed like the right thing to do and (2) life has nice sides and darker sides and I don't think pretending the darker sides don't exist is a realistic position.

Re: Omegle 2009-2023

#618

Post by agumonkey »

Once upon a time, I was aimless and ended up on omegle after someone suggested it to me. For 8+ months I kinda lived on it, and watching countries come and go depending on timezones was quite funny, you could recognize speech/writing patterns in different cultures. You'd know in a minute if someone was chinese or colombian. A fun anthropological experiment.

Re: Omegle 2009-2023

#619

Post by concordDance »

dragonwriter wrote: post #378
Dylan16807 wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> If it's actually very rare, that doesn't seem like an appropriate way to handle a free service. A service you pay for via the presence of ads isn’t free in a way that makes that really true, and even if the service was free, if the benefits to the people that aren't being victimized aren't worth charging a sufficient amount to cover the harms to those who are, I would argue the service is almost certainly a net soc…

Only if the host captures the lion's share if the benefits. This is hard (transaction costs are a big free market issue).

Re: Omegle 2009-2023

#620

Post by buf »

thrawn0r wrote: post #594

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

Couldn't this have been any website with a messaging system on it? Twitter, facebook, even email.

I don't get how they can sue Omegle for this.

Edit: was it because of the video component of Omegle?

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