8 ms·

Omegle Was Forced to Shut Down by a Lawsuit from a Sexual Abuse Survivor

121 points by spondylosaurus 3y ago

spondylosaurus 3y ago
> “Virtually every tool can be used for good or for evil, and that is especially true of communication tools, due to their innate flexibility,” Leif K-Brooks, Omegle’s founder, wrote in a note announcing the site’s end. “The telephone can be used to wish your grandmother ‘happy birthday’, but it can also be used to call in a bomb threat. There can be no honest accounting of Omegle without acknowledging that some people misused it, including to commit unspeakably heinous crimes.” K-Brooks’ note did not mention the settlement in his statement, but blamed the closure of Omegle on unspecified “attacks” against communication services. > There’s a flaw in K-Brooks’ argument: The telephone doesn’t connect children and teens directly to sexual predators with the click of a button. Omegle’s model allowed sexual predators to sign on and click through a roulette of people, continuously jumping from one to another until they were face-to-face with who they were looking for. Yesterday's discussion about K-Brooks' statement: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38199355 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38199355
- Teever 3y ago
  > There’s a flaw in K-Brooks’ argument: The telephone doesn’t connect children and teens directly to sexual predators with the click of a button. Omegle’s model allowed sexual predators to sign on and click through a roulette of people, continuously jumping from one to another until they were face-to-face with who they were looking for. I used to answer the phone as a child and talk to complete strangers.
  - hfjjbf 3y ago
    Yes, but did they pull their dicks out or ask you to undress? Telephone just isn’t a valid metaphor here.
    - whatshisface 3y ago
      I'm wondering how long it's going to be before someone sues a city for public indecency committed at a street intersection. After all, public spaces connect you instantly with strangers who only have to show up.
      - Spivak 3y ago
        I mean that's not a totally unrealistic situation, if there was a city that was plagued such behavior and the police/justice system as a whole weren't able to tamp it down to the point where it was commonplace when going out I bet someone would sue the city to do something about it.
    - tails4e 3y ago
      Actually a sexual predator did call me when I was primary school. Back then when the phone rang as the principal was also a teacher, a student would run out to answer the phone. One day it was my turn. I answerd and asked politey how I could help. The person on the other end, claimed he was a doctor, and proceeded to ask increasingly personal and sexual questions to 10 year old me, and I didn't know what to do, I wasnt savvy enough to hang up, so went along with it, and eventually said if get the pricipal. So yes the phone can be used to abuse. Sick fucks will find a way.
    - superkuh 3y ago
      Yeah, especially since the vast majority (90%) of sexual abuse is done by people well known to the family of the abused (most likely the family itself). It's really hard to do forced physical sexual abuse over the internet when all that has to happen to end the interaction is a click.
      - anigbrowl 3y ago
        Consent isn't a defense to statutory rape, and it doesn't work here for the same reason.
    - Teever 3y ago
      The piece I quoted placed emphasis on sexual predators being able to communicate over the medium, not public displays of nudity, so I think the comparison to the telephone is relevant. But that's besides the point. If you don't want your kids to see peoples dicks on the internet than exhibit better control over your kids access to the internet. It's not up to me and the rest of society to police your kids. I don't want to lose an internet that has charming sites like Omegle because people can't be bothered to take care of their kids.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
dmitrygr 3y ago
Please punch a hole on your “once again, a lack of parenting being solved by something other than better parenting” card.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- 3cats-in-a-coat 3y ago
  I don't know how you understand "parenting" but it's not supposed to involve 24/7 second by second monitoring of a teenager's life. It's complicated. I don't blame Omegle, but sometimes there's no one to blame, except the perpetrators. Now, thanks to AI, we could recreate Omegle and make it safer, like detect children using it, and detect abusers. Of course this may trigger an arm's race of filters. But I think we have avenues to try.
  - runnr_az 3y ago
    Maybe... but is all the effort worth the reward for the risk?
  - foogazi 3y ago
    AI is no substitute for HI in this case
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - ipaddr 3y ago
    Parenting a teen is re-forcing values taught earlier in life. Expecting society to share parenting responsibilities doesn't work. It could be safer but it's up to you to decide your family's risk/reward ratio. Safer getting a dick video online then in person and a teachable moment. These dicks are out there in the world. This could belong to your teacher, friend's dad, brother.. if you ever see this again call 911 and rin.
    - 3cats-in-a-coat 3y ago
DoreenMichele 3y ago
I have mixed feelings about this. It's just one article. I don't have a lot of context. I can see how their model -- letting people scroll through images until they saw one they liked -- contributed to the issue. I also feel like there are larger societal issues that foster such problems and going after the tech is probably a relatively weak solution that tends to make people comfortable with leaving other issues unresolved. I think it's like a scapegoat. It's easier to go after and it makes people feel like they did something when they did little, if anything, most likely.
- johnnyanmac 3y ago
  > I also feel like there are larger societal issues that foster such problems and going after the tech is probably a relatively weak solution that tends to make people comfortable with leaving other issues unresolved. that's my feelings and unfortunately going after the middleman is an increasingly popular strategy. It's more a matter of how many lawyers the website can throw at the issue because every single site that allows user hosted content will run into this issue. Sweeping the problem further under the rug instead of funding actual solutions.
Always_Anon 3y ago
If you used Omegle for more than 30 seconds, you'd know it was filled with sexual predators exposing themselves to children. I'm surprised it lasted this long. I'm sympathetic to the creator, I don't think tools should be banned because there are bad users, but Omegle's user base has its reputation for a reason.
- kylebenzle 3y ago
  Children actually were not allowed to use the site. By that logic you could say the same thing about every single porn site.
  - webkike 3y ago
    No, you cant, because porn sites don't let you see the webcam of the person watching your video.
  - garciasn 3y ago
    I’m sorry, but as far as I know, for the longest time there wasn’t even a blatant warning about being under 18. According to the BBC, it was only after “Alice” filed the lawsuit that they added a checkbox saying you had to be 18+. S: https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-64618791 https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-64618791
    - KomoD 3y ago
      For a very long time it was 13+ with parental permission, otherwise 18+
  - dragonwriter 3y ago
    > Children actually were not allowed to use the site. Children 13+ were formally allowed to use the site with parental permission until after the lawsuit at issue was filed, but even that restriction was just, I think, a pro-forma fine print footer notice to provide CYA against COPPA requirements on sites that were directed at kids under 13.
- maplant 3y ago
mattigames 3y ago
Pretty sure Facebook, Twitter and TikTok have all already been involved in more than one first meeting between rape and homicide victims and the wrongdoers, why haven't they been closed? The lighthearted guess is that is because they fight against such evils taking a lot of preventive measures, the cynic in me and what I believe more likely is that they are seen as "too big too fail", like some bizarre form of small governments.
- alephnerd 3y ago
  > why haven't they been closed Because they try to mitigate CSAM with moderation. Moderation is not censorship despite what some HN big brains might think
  - ForkMeOnTinder 3y ago
    This comment seems to imply Omegle had no moderation, and that is false. https://www.omegle.com/ https://www.omegle.com/ > I believe in a responsibility to be a “good Samaritan”, and to implement reasonable measures to fight crime and other misuse. That is exactly what Omegle did. In addition to the basic safety feature of anonymity, there was a great deal of moderation behind the scenes, including state-of-the-art AI operating in concert with a wonderful team of human moderators. Omegle punched above its weight in content moderation, and I’m proud of what we accomplished. > Omegle’s moderation even had a positive impact beyond the site. Omegle worked with law enforcement agencies, and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, to help put evildoers in prison where they belong. There are “people” rotting behind bars right now thanks in part to evidence that Omegle proactively collected against them, and tipped the authorities off to. -- The real reason, of course, is that Facebook can afford an army of lawyers, but Omegle can't.
    - alephnerd 3y ago
      Not at the bare minimum needed as a number of Omegle users have mentioned on HN.
      - 3y ago
password4321 3y ago
Discussion yesterday, minus the lawsuit: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38199355 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38199355 (950+ comments)
Racing0461 3y ago
Very bad precedent. esp for gun companies (thankfully they are protected via a direct law (for now at least)).
aaron695 3y ago
[dead]
Unbefleckt 3y ago
Why use the word survivor for someone who was coerced into taking pics of the self naked and was never physically abused
- rantallion 3y ago
  Not all abuse is physical, and not being physical doesn't necessarily diminish the trauma the survivor has experienced. Why is 'survivor' not apt here?
  - 4rt 3y ago
    I'm not from the USA but it seems like "survivor" traditionally implies having survived a situation where the normal expectation is poor odds of survivability. Nobody's a stubbed toe survivor or an upset about the bus survivor.
    - eek2121 3y ago
      I am a stubbed toe survivor! I almost died (from laughter!) the last time I stubbed my toe (fell down the stairs)
    - reportgunner 3y ago
      I guess they would use the word survivor to say that the person did not end up ending their stay on this earth.
    - ojosilva 3y ago
      Sexual abuse has very poor odds of emotional recovery. Surviving an emotional ordeal is a valid use and recognized meaning: "to continue to live after being in a ... difficult situation" (Cambridge dictionary). Example: "she survived two divorces." In this case, psychological abuse can, and often does, lead to "destruction or death," which could be a crushed self-esteem, a crippling depression or even suicide.
- johnnyanmac 3y ago
  It's more PR talk and "victim" seems to be becoming more taboo as a descriptive term. I suppose "survivor" has a braver connotation in that they can overcome the trauma, while a "victim" cannot. Language is certainly interesting.
skynet1234 3y ago
I think parents should take some responsibility here. The park analogy that the creator of omegle made is interesting, we don't shutdown parks because a crime may take place there. And why not just remove video chat completely and keep the text chat and with higher moderation and tools, it should have been possible to keep the problems at bay. We might try to out reason the following argument but I do believe it demands reflection. Omegle was about the only popular mass media which was fully distributed, allowed for random encounters with people. I am reminded of Aaron Swartz. And, I have a deep suspicion that Omegle's shutdown being part of the lawsuit settlement has a lot more to the story. And probably the creator also had to sign NDA or something.
- johnnyanmac 3y ago
  >And why not just remove video chat completely and keep the text chat and with higher moderation and tools, it should have been possible to keep the problems at bay. I am sure that was very possible. But from the tone of the creator's last post, it sounds like this was the camel that broke the camel's back, after years of straw that was already on the way to breaking it. He just sounded like it was becoming harder to manage and affecting his mental health. A single lawsuit will certainly do damage, but it didn't sound like the only factor in closing it down.
goodboyjojo 3y ago
i used omegle. it was ok but you did get a few perverts here and there. same thing with chat roulette

> “Virtually every tool can be used for good or for evil, and that is especially true of communication tools, due to their innate flexibility,” Leif K-Brooks, Omegle’s founder, wrote in a note announcing the site’s end. “The telephone can be used to wish your grandmother ‘happy birthday’, but it can also be used to call in a bomb threat. There can be no honest accounting of Omegle without acknowledging that some people misused it, including to commit unspeakably heinous crimes.” K-Brooks’ note did not mention the settlement in his statement, but blamed the closure of Omegle on unspecified “attacks” against communication services. > There’s a flaw in K-Brooks’ argument: The telephone doesn’t connect children and teens directly to sexual predators with the click of a button. Omegle’s model allowed sexual predators to sign on and click through a roulette of people, continuously jumping from one to another until they were face-to-face with who they were looking for. Yesterday's discussion about K-Brooks' statement: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38199355 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38199355

Teever 3y ago
> There’s a flaw in K-Brooks’ argument: The telephone doesn’t connect children and teens directly to sexual predators with the click of a button. Omegle’s model allowed sexual predators to sign on and click through a roulette of people, continuously jumping from one to another until they were face-to-face with who they were looking for. I used to answer the phone as a child and talk to complete strangers.
- hfjjbf 3y ago
  Yes, but did they pull their dicks out or ask you to undress? Telephone just isn’t a valid metaphor here.
  - whatshisface 3y ago
    I'm wondering how long it's going to be before someone sues a city for public indecency committed at a street intersection. After all, public spaces connect you instantly with strangers who only have to show up.
    - Spivak 3y ago
      I mean that's not a totally unrealistic situation, if there was a city that was plagued such behavior and the police/justice system as a whole weren't able to tamp it down to the point where it was commonplace when going out I bet someone would sue the city to do something about it.
  - tails4e 3y ago
    Actually a sexual predator did call me when I was primary school. Back then when the phone rang as the principal was also a teacher, a student would run out to answer the phone. One day it was my turn. I answerd and asked politey how I could help. The person on the other end, claimed he was a doctor, and proceeded to ask increasingly personal and sexual questions to 10 year old me, and I didn't know what to do, I wasnt savvy enough to hang up, so went along with it, and eventually said if get the pricipal. So yes the phone can be used to abuse. Sick fucks will find a way.
  - superkuh 3y ago
    Yeah, especially since the vast majority (90%) of sexual abuse is done by people well known to the family of the abused (most likely the family itself). It's really hard to do forced physical sexual abuse over the internet when all that has to happen to end the interaction is a click.
    - anigbrowl 3y ago
      Consent isn't a defense to statutory rape, and it doesn't work here for the same reason.
  - Teever 3y ago
    The piece I quoted placed emphasis on sexual predators being able to communicate over the medium, not public displays of nudity, so I think the comparison to the telephone is relevant. But that's besides the point. If you don't want your kids to see peoples dicks on the internet than exhibit better control over your kids access to the internet. It's not up to me and the rest of society to police your kids. I don't want to lose an internet that has charming sites like Omegle because people can't be bothered to take care of their kids.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

dmitrygr 3y ago

Please punch a hole on your “once again, a lack of parenting being solved by something other than better parenting” card.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
3cats-in-a-coat 3y ago
I don't know how you understand "parenting" but it's not supposed to involve 24/7 second by second monitoring of a teenager's life. It's complicated. I don't blame Omegle, but sometimes there's no one to blame, except the perpetrators. Now, thanks to AI, we could recreate Omegle and make it safer, like detect children using it, and detect abusers. Of course this may trigger an arm's race of filters. But I think we have avenues to try.
- runnr_az 3y ago
  Maybe... but is all the effort worth the reward for the risk?
- foogazi 3y ago
  AI is no substitute for HI in this case
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- ipaddr 3y ago
  Parenting a teen is re-forcing values taught earlier in life. Expecting society to share parenting responsibilities doesn't work. It could be safer but it's up to you to decide your family's risk/reward ratio. Safer getting a dick video online then in person and a teachable moment. These dicks are out there in the world. This could belong to your teacher, friend's dad, brother.. if you ever see this again call 911 and rin.
  - 3cats-in-a-coat 3y ago

DoreenMichele 3y ago

I have mixed feelings about this. It's just one article. I don't have a lot of context. I can see how their model -- letting people scroll through images until they saw one they liked -- contributed to the issue. I also feel like there are larger societal issues that foster such problems and going after the tech is probably a relatively weak solution that tends to make people comfortable with leaving other issues unresolved. I think it's like a scapegoat. It's easier to go after and it makes people feel like they did something when they did little, if anything, most likely.

johnnyanmac 3y ago
> I also feel like there are larger societal issues that foster such problems and going after the tech is probably a relatively weak solution that tends to make people comfortable with leaving other issues unresolved. that's my feelings and unfortunately going after the middleman is an increasingly popular strategy. It's more a matter of how many lawyers the website can throw at the issue because every single site that allows user hosted content will run into this issue. Sweeping the problem further under the rug instead of funding actual solutions.

Always_Anon 3y ago

If you used Omegle for more than 30 seconds, you'd know it was filled with sexual predators exposing themselves to children. I'm surprised it lasted this long. I'm sympathetic to the creator, I don't think tools should be banned because there are bad users, but Omegle's user base has its reputation for a reason.

kylebenzle 3y ago
Children actually were not allowed to use the site. By that logic you could say the same thing about every single porn site.
- webkike 3y ago
  No, you cant, because porn sites don't let you see the webcam of the person watching your video.
- garciasn 3y ago
  I’m sorry, but as far as I know, for the longest time there wasn’t even a blatant warning about being under 18. According to the BBC, it was only after “Alice” filed the lawsuit that they added a checkbox saying you had to be 18+. S: https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-64618791 https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-64618791
  - KomoD 3y ago
    For a very long time it was 13+ with parental permission, otherwise 18+
- dragonwriter 3y ago
  > Children actually were not allowed to use the site. Children 13+ were formally allowed to use the site with parental permission until after the lawsuit at issue was filed, but even that restriction was just, I think, a pro-forma fine print footer notice to provide CYA against COPPA requirements on sites that were directed at kids under 13.
maplant 3y ago

mattigames 3y ago

Pretty sure Facebook, Twitter and TikTok have all already been involved in more than one first meeting between rape and homicide victims and the wrongdoers, why haven't they been closed? The lighthearted guess is that is because they fight against such evils taking a lot of preventive measures, the cynic in me and what I believe more likely is that they are seen as "too big too fail", like some bizarre form of small governments.

alephnerd 3y ago
> why haven't they been closed Because they try to mitigate CSAM with moderation. Moderation is not censorship despite what some HN big brains might think
- ForkMeOnTinder 3y ago
  This comment seems to imply Omegle had no moderation, and that is false. https://www.omegle.com/ https://www.omegle.com/ > I believe in a responsibility to be a “good Samaritan”, and to implement reasonable measures to fight crime and other misuse. That is exactly what Omegle did. In addition to the basic safety feature of anonymity, there was a great deal of moderation behind the scenes, including state-of-the-art AI operating in concert with a wonderful team of human moderators. Omegle punched above its weight in content moderation, and I’m proud of what we accomplished. > Omegle’s moderation even had a positive impact beyond the site. Omegle worked with law enforcement agencies, and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, to help put evildoers in prison where they belong. There are “people” rotting behind bars right now thanks in part to evidence that Omegle proactively collected against them, and tipped the authorities off to. -- The real reason, of course, is that Facebook can afford an army of lawyers, but Omegle can't.
  - alephnerd 3y ago
    Not at the bare minimum needed as a number of Omegle users have mentioned on HN.
    - 3y ago

password4321 3y ago

Discussion yesterday, minus the lawsuit: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38199355 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38199355 (950+ comments)

Racing0461 3y ago

Very bad precedent. esp for gun companies (thankfully they are protected via a direct law (for now at least)).

aaron695 3y ago

[dead]

Unbefleckt 3y ago

Why use the word survivor for someone who was coerced into taking pics of the self naked and was never physically abused

rantallion 3y ago
Not all abuse is physical, and not being physical doesn't necessarily diminish the trauma the survivor has experienced. Why is 'survivor' not apt here?
- 4rt 3y ago
  I'm not from the USA but it seems like "survivor" traditionally implies having survived a situation where the normal expectation is poor odds of survivability. Nobody's a stubbed toe survivor or an upset about the bus survivor.
  - eek2121 3y ago
    I am a stubbed toe survivor! I almost died (from laughter!) the last time I stubbed my toe (fell down the stairs)
  - reportgunner 3y ago
    I guess they would use the word survivor to say that the person did not end up ending their stay on this earth.
  - ojosilva 3y ago
    Sexual abuse has very poor odds of emotional recovery. Surviving an emotional ordeal is a valid use and recognized meaning: "to continue to live after being in a ... difficult situation" (Cambridge dictionary). Example: "she survived two divorces." In this case, psychological abuse can, and often does, lead to "destruction or death," which could be a crushed self-esteem, a crippling depression or even suicide.
johnnyanmac 3y ago
It's more PR talk and "victim" seems to be becoming more taboo as a descriptive term. I suppose "survivor" has a braver connotation in that they can overcome the trauma, while a "victim" cannot. Language is certainly interesting.

skynet1234 3y ago

I think parents should take some responsibility here. The park analogy that the creator of omegle made is interesting, we don't shutdown parks because a crime may take place there. And why not just remove video chat completely and keep the text chat and with higher moderation and tools, it should have been possible to keep the problems at bay. We might try to out reason the following argument but I do believe it demands reflection. Omegle was about the only popular mass media which was fully distributed, allowed for random encounters with people. I am reminded of Aaron Swartz. And, I have a deep suspicion that Omegle's shutdown being part of the lawsuit settlement has a lot more to the story. And probably the creator also had to sign NDA or something.

johnnyanmac 3y ago
>And why not just remove video chat completely and keep the text chat and with higher moderation and tools, it should have been possible to keep the problems at bay. I am sure that was very possible. But from the tone of the creator's last post, it sounds like this was the camel that broke the camel's back, after years of straw that was already on the way to breaking it. He just sounded like it was becoming harder to manage and affecting his mental health. A single lawsuit will certainly do damage, but it didn't sound like the only factor in closing it down.

goodboyjojo 3y ago

i used omegle. it was ok but you did get a few perverts here and there. same thing with chat roulette