Omegle 2009-2023

There is no journalist here to side with unfortunately. Ethics are infringed upon whether the other party is responsible for worse violations or not. It's not an either-or situation.

You can't shut down everything once a bad actor does heinous things. There would be nothing left around. No more streets, no more cafes, no more trash bins, no more cars. Nothing.

As it has been pointed out, omegle did arguably provide more protection against bad actors that lots of other services around today. If you're in a situation you don't like, just press next and it's over. Nobody can contact you or recognise you in any way.

The crimes happen when you're not anonymous anymore, after exchanging snapchat or instagram accounts for example. They don't happen in a months long omegle conversation.

The root of the problem is being careless and providing identifying information. Obviously kids are too young to understand all the dangers, that's what parents are for. You wouldn't let your kids alone in the middle of the city and then sue it when a pedophile gets access to them. You can't let your kids use the Internet without keeping an eye on what is going on and warning them of the perils.

you'll grant however that when we were young, it was more of an unknown wild west. Parents didn't know what to make of it or fear, there was generally more freedom afforded. We were the first generation with stupid-easy access to pirated pornography. No one had any idea of health concerns, at best you heard a blanket moral stance that didn't convince anyone.

I think today parents have access to far better means of regulating access, should they so choose, and they're more conscious of it. I'm not saying it's fool-proof, but the overhead is enough to dissuade kids from spending too much time and getting into trouble.

Claude nails it without a sweat.

There is no _one_ reason, and I don't present that particular phenomenon as a causal factor but as a symptom of the greater problem - which certainly includes poverty but is even more closely aligned to the opioid epidemic.

All this is in the context of asking parents to provide their children the guidance required to avoid child-inappropriate content.

My point stands: a large and growing contingent of parents lack the stability/ability/support required to even keep their children's behavior within acceptable boundaries. It's a fool's errand to think keeping kids away from bad actors on the internet can be added to their plate.

For that one it may be a combination of two things.

1. He starts out by asking if he can show them a magic trick. They say yes or nod yes. He then exits stage right. He then returns either through the back door or some the side stage left. Where he enters from is too far away from where he left for him to have walked or even ran there in the time between entrance and exit.

The part up to where he exists stage left could be pre-recorded. His wording and gestures change slightly with different people but he could have several different pre-recorded segments for this.

As Teller once observed:

> Sometimes magic is just someone spending more time on something than anyone else might reasonably expect

Penn has said something similar:

> The only secret of magic is that I’m willing to work harder on it than you think it’s worth

It could then switch to live for his return, where he then actually converses with them to prove that he's live.

2. If he encounters someone whose responses to the pre-recorded segment don't fit in, he skips them. Remember, we don't see how many people he had to try this with to get enough good ones for a video, and recall Teller's quote from above.

The one he's done that has me baffled is the one where he does this:

1. He asks them what city they live in.

2. He then tells them he used to live in that city and gives the address of where he lived. It is their address or an address of a close neighbor.

He also does this except instead of asking the city he tells them he has a talent for guessing people's names, and then tells them their name.

I can see in general how to do these, by using fake disconnects. He uses fake disconnects in one of his most common routines where he asks someone if he can show them a magic trick, starts a "pick a card" type routine, and then disconnects just has he's revealing their card. Then later when the person is connected to someone else either that someone else says "is this your card?" and holds up the correct card or he walks into that someone else's room and shows the card.

The key here is that he doesn't really disconnect. He just shows the disconnect screen, and then switches to feeding them video of the other person. They think that they have connected to someone new on Omegle but it is him the whole time.

With fake disconnects he could have his subjects in the "tell them their name" bit first talk to an accomplice who gets their name, fake disconnect and fake connect with him, and then he can do his name guess.

That should be fairly easy because people often exchange names on Omegle. But full addresses? I'd hope that would be rare, rare enough that even a Penn/Teller level of time would not be enough to get many people.