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

I don't intend to victim blame or defend any abusers here; this shit is vile and should not be tolerated, period.
From the below, it sounds like it was determined that, despite Omegle's moderation efforts, Omegle could have done better in areas relating to age verification and matchmaking. So I'm not trying to defend or minimize Omegle's role either, I don't know the details of how the site worked but it sounds like this was a problem for a long time:
the judge in A.M.’s case found last July that Omegle’s design was at fault and it was not protected by Section 230: It could have worked to prevent matches between minors and adults before sexual content was even sent, the judge said.
However, I really don't like the choice of phrasing "forced", and I wonder whether that's poor paraphrasing or actually taken from the lawsuit.
Her lawsuit, filed in 2021, alleged that she met a man in his thirties on Omegle who forced her to take naked photos and videos over a three-year period. She was just 11 when it began in 2014.
Again, to be clear, not trying to say that the victim should, or even could, have done anything differently. Victim blaming is bad. But how the hell are they saying "forced" to do something by some scumbag over the internet? What kind of conditions does a kid have to be in at home to feel like they can't turn to their parent/guardian for help in a terrifying situation like that? How is an 11-year-old in 2014 being allowed to get into that situation in the first place, between her parents and her school?
It seems like this victim was failed by every support system she should have been able to rely on. This is so messed up. This is exactly why we need things like sex education and Internet safety education.
- This is a failure of parenting. WTF is an 11 year old doing on Omegle?
  
  It just isn’t that simple. I’ve got four kids. At least one of them ended up watching a naked man on Omegle once. And I say this because they were in a group of friends and dared each other on, on a school trip, and they were discovered (one of them felt pretty shocked and told a teacher) and we had a big discussion with her.
  Kids do dumb shit all the time. Omegle is (was) very much known about amongst them all.
  So, even with careful parenting and a locked down internet, and policies not to have phones upstairs in your room, kids do dumb shit or find a new service that isn’t in your filter, because they’ve heard about it through their friends. I know because my wife and I carefully raise four kids and the internet is a fucking onslaught to a dopamine dependent, approval seeking teenager.
  I’m not saying “it’s all Omegle’s fault”. Everyone had a role to play. But let’s not pretend Omegle was blameless.
- But how the hell are they saying “forced” to do something by some scumbag over the internet?
  There was a group from Brazil doing stuff like that and got publicized when they were arrested recently. Usually they'd coerce the minor into sending one picture, then use it as blackmail against them to give them more. They might even gaslight them to convince them that they'll get in big trouble if they tell anyone and it'll just get worse for them.
  I've seen full fledged adults taken hard by scammers and willingly giving them thousands of dollars against their own interests, and they heavily distrust and resist anyone trying to help them. I can only imagine accomplishing that with a child that lacks long term thinking skills is even more effective.
  
  Literally a black mirror episode
- children are incredibly easy to influence. "if you don't do it I will find where you live and harm your family, and do not call the cops/tell your parents" is often enough threat.
  
  The common thing I've seen in more well -knowncases was the abuser striking up a relationship and pretending to be somebody younger, getting compromising details/photos from the victim, then threatening to release those to family/friends unless the victim follows their wishes (which often providing further sexual images/acts).
  Not sure if that might be the case with a service like Omegle, but it was essentially what happened in the Amanda Todd case and other similar cases.
  
  what if the children play Roblox and are aware of the existence of pedos, they will be more careful right?
- What kind of conditions does a kid have to be in at home to feel like they can't turn to their parent/guardian for help in a terrifying situation like that?
  Or… close the tab?
  
  Or click unmatch
- God, this entire comment section is nothing but
  "I'm not victim blaming, but..."
  "personal responsibility"
  "parents should be doing blah blah blah....no, I don't have kids."
  The best parents in the world still can't control what their kids are doing every second of every day. Kids will always find ways around every single thing that's meant to restrict what they can do, see, or hear. I'm sure you never did stuff you weren't supposed to when you were a kid...right?
  
  Yeah, and we could shut down the Internet all together... or we could be realistic about prevention.
  And yes, I accessed lots of 'sensitive' material online as a kid well before this website existed. So I find it hard to blame this specific website...websites come and go. I do however absolutely blame the creep himself since they are the one who did something wrong. Not the website.
  
  Thank you for adding just another reason for the myriad of pre-existing ones that convinced me of never having kids.
  
  I'll do it then, I am victim-blaming. An 11 year old broke the rules and logged onto a website that she shouldn't be on and then somehow a 30 year old guy forced her to take naked pictures. The problem wasn't the website, it's this child that broke the rules and doesn't know not to do things for strangers on the internet.
- Chat Roulette, the site Omegle copied the video format from, had a built in report option that would ban nude people.
- So have you heard of emotional violence or exploitation? That's how that works over the internet. You don't need to be in the same room to be forced to do something if you're vulnerable.
  
  OP addressed that already. OP is saying something akin to the following:
  "A kid wanders at night alone and gets into a run down bar. She gets groped. The police shuts down the bar, everyone applauds. But what is a kid doing wandering around at night unsupervised?! Where are the parents?"

Not trying to victim blame here but what kind of idiot parent lets an underage child on the internet unrestricted. Like godam what do u think goes on online.
- Oh, buddy, all of them
  
  not all of them but most
  
  Yeah, it's pretty damn hard to stop kids from doing things - especially since they have their own devices that are required for school.
- what kind of idiot parent lets an underage child on the internet unrestricted
  All of them? The only restrictions my parents gave were about the amount of time I spent there and it's the same story with all my friends.
  
  Back in the dial up days, my dad installed a switch in the phone socket in his room (which was wired before the phone socket in the computer room) so he could disable the internet at night. I used to sneak in while he was snoring and crawl around the bed to switch it back on.
  Point being, there's only so much you can do to prevent kids from accessing things they shouldn't. The right way to parent is to try and direct your kids towards the right things, but also offer age-appropriate yet honest explanations for the things they do find. But it's a difficult balance, as kids get older they deserve more privacy, and it's difficult enough for an individual to stay ahead of the tech curve than to keep your whole family on top of it.
  
  As a nerdy kid growing up, I was in charge of implementing the household safety features for our internet. I explained what features there were, how they work, and they were active.
  May have forgotten to mention/block VPN though. That always seemed to work perfectly every week.
  
  Please don't lump me in with your irresponsible parents please and thank you.
  
  That argument is getting weaker every year. Let's assume that the parents were 18 when they had her, that means the parents were born in 1985. That makes them millennials, who probably had the internet from at least 5 years old. So they aren't some ignorant boomers who have no idea what the internet is, and they can take steps to moderate the experience.
- Even more than this, if your kid feels pressured by an adult to get naked for them, and doesn't immediately tell you, then I believe you have utterly failed as a parent.
- what kind of idiot parent lets an underage child on the internet unrestricted.
  I'm 35, and I have been online pretty much unrestricted since I'm 11/12ish. But yes, I saw some shits.
  
  I'm a few years older than you, and when we were kids our parents didn't understand what the internet is and what the implications were.
  Parents today don't have the luxury of claiming ignorance. The vast majority of people understand that the internet is full of dangers for kids (and everyone really).
  
  Ironicly same here. I did have to bypass restrictions put on me but i feel i earned to right to see fucked shit online by doing that.
- Though it's not entirely without risk, I'm glad my parents, friends' parents and school did when I was a kid. I find it somehow sad if today's kids aren't exploring the web + world on their own (with advice) some of the time, and figuring out how to act carefully outside of the walled gardens, getting to know themselves and preparing for the realities of life.
- COPPA
  children under 13 can’t be online unsupervised
  
  I think you forgot this: /s
- I'm glad my dad has a no smartphone/electronics till you're 18.

When do the alcoholics get to sue the bars/pubs for "forcing" them to walk through the door and order a drink?
Another good thing falls to the whims of lack of personal responsibility, parenting, and Helen (won't someone think of the children?!) Lovejoy syndrome. Now the predators will just continue to do there thing in a darker hole that is even harder to find.
- If a bar is consistently serving alcohol to minors, it deserves consequences.
  
  Yeah there's literally laws against it lol. The op analogy sucks.
  
  A bar can reliably verify the customer's age, a website can't do that.
  The internet is not a safe space for children. It's absolutely the parents' responsibility to monitor their children's internet consumption.
- If a drunk driver kills someone then the place who served them is sued
  That darker hole is discord though, I wrote to them begging them to shut down their public server/community finder
  
  If a drunk driver kills someone then the place who served them is sued
  Personally I think this is crazy, and totally without merit.
  
  I've been using Discord since 2017 and not once have I had some random stranger get naked on camera. I'm not saying that there aren't problems with it. There probably are. I just think that saying it's worse than Omegle is bizarre.
- I'm confused, are you saying that it was the 11 year old girl's personal responsibility to avoid being the victim of sexual abuse? Or are you saying that it was her parents' responsibility to be monitoring her technology use 24/7?
  Neither seems right to me...
  Now the predators will just continue to do there thing in a darker hole that is even harder to find.
  If it's harder to find, then fewer children stumble upon it and get preyed upon, which is a good thing.
  
  Or are you saying that it was her parents' responsibility to be monitoring her technology use 24/7?
  Dunno about parent commenter, but that is exactly what I am saying. The parent is responsible for the minor child's safety. That would include not giving her unmonitored unrestricted internet access until she reaches an age when she can safely use it. That is literally what parental controls are there for.
  To make an analogy- The kid here was playing in the street and got hit by a drunk driver. The solution to that isn't to put Ford out of business for making the truck, or to put fences on every sidewalk. The solution is throw the drunk driver in jail and remind parents not to let their kids play in the street.
  
  My point is that the safety of that 11 year old is no more Omegles responsibility than it is a bar’s responsibility to prevent the drunk from drinking.
  If the answer to children getting into things that they shouldn’t is not allowing those things to exist then that is not a workable or desirable solution in the long term.
  
  Children aren't supposed to play 18+ rated games. But few of them did so, we're shutting down all games👌
- I don't understand the comparison. Are the children being preyed upon the alcoholics in this scenario?
  
  No, the drunk children are sending dic pics on Discord, I think?

In 2022, there were 608,601 reports of child exploitation on Omegle to the nonprofit National Center for Missing and Exploited Children’s CyberTipline. Of all the sites the center tracked, only Facebook, Google, Instagram, and WhatsApp ranked higher.
That's a crazy high number. Especially for a live content platform which I assume can only ever have individual reports of live interactions?
- Would you like to share your story?
  Edit: I don't know how the question sounded to you guys. My intention was to hear their events and hardships that they claimed they saw and even felt on omegle.
- Of all the sites the center tracked, only Facebook, Google, Instagram, and WhatsApp ranked higher.
  If there are four that are worse, "only" seems out of place on that sentence.
  
  I was surprised by that too. It also minimizes the sheer amount of users on those platforms. We're talking billions of people if not nearly every single person in the world.
  How many daily users did Omegle have?
  This site says 3.35 million daily active users.
  I guess having so many fewer users made Omegle a bigger problem, proportionally.
- Google
  ???
  
  YouTube

Parents fault, not the site.
- Parents don't know DNS...

I have a fundamental question about this case: was he there physically with her? Coercion is one thing, but the word "force" implies he was somehow in control. I am in no way defending him, but it reeks terribly of the "look what you made me do" vibe and I feel somewhat uneasy about how this played out.
Omegle was a piece of the internet I never partook in. It never appealed to me to talk with random internet people. Perhaps I don't understand why he had power over her.
Edit: thanks, I everyone. I get it from a subjective position.
- Her lawsuit, filed in 2021, alleged that she met a man in his thirties on Omegle who forced her to take naked photos and videos over a three-year period. She was just 11 when it began in 2014.
  Not all methods of force are physical. This was an adult talking to an 11 year old. 11 year olds have in many cases not had enough life experience to understand that there are adults that will manipulate them in this way. It’s possible he got her to do things and then blackmailed her for more. Regardless of how he did it, he was an adult and she was an 11 year old child. Not acceptable no matter the circumstance.
- Perhaps I don't understand why he had power over her.
  One can have leverage over another person by threatening to harm oneself or someone else.
  There's been many cases in omegle of people threatening "show me your boobs or I'll kill this pet". If the victim complies, the agressor may continue through blackmailing.
- I can only assume but the first few pictures where probably coerced and after wards she was threatened to send more or he would release them. That definitely counts as forced. She was only 11 and this thing went on for 3 years. It's definitely not just "look what you made me do".
  You can force someone to do something without being physically present.
- He somehow got her to get started and then threatened her, saying that she was now complicit in making illegal porn and would get in trouble.
- Shitty parents don’t look at internet history. Even shittier parents blame others for not educating themselves on protecting their kids.
  
  Ok but that’s still not the kids fault. It’s the adult who forced a child to send him nude photos.
  
  Look at internet history?! That’s the first thing kids learn to clear, right before private mode and free (trial) VPN services. The methods get swapped like candy in school.
  May I gently ask if you have kids? My experience is that curious t(w)eenagers always find a way and I say this as someone who runs their own pihole, OPNsense-filtering router. The filter mobile phone networks enable is poor and by the time kids hit 13, they know every trick in the book.
  And that’s before you realise screen time restrictions doesn’t actually work fully on iOS.

I'm honestly surprised it took this long

Archived version: https://archive.is/0eou1

Autoplaying unrelated videos. Shit wasteful website.

I'm really confused am I supposed to have heard of this website apparently everybody haves been using it for over a decade and I feel like I'm from a parallel universe. What the hell is this website?
- Omegle was super popular worldwide, it's one of the "first generation" internet social platforms, back from the age when people got really impressed by the possibilities of the web.
  Basically, Omegle is a platform where you chat with random people using your webcam. It's like a Google Meet or Skype call, but the website randomly assigns you to somebody else, and you can choose to skip and move on to the next person as soon as you wish.
  So you can be browsing and suddenly you're talking to a Brazilian guitar player, and then a maths professor, and then two shy teenagers screaming, and then a dude in a Star Wars costume, and so on.
  As you might imagine upon hearing the phrase "random people with their webcams turned on" Omegle was a place filled, and I do mean filled, with naked people. Mostly men. The conversations would start with the camera turned on by default, meaning you'd be flashed with a dick before even being able to react.
  It's also infamous for a lot of child porn.
  
  And the a dude masturbating 😅
  
  Omegle was originally chat only. Chat Roulette was the original video chat service. Omegle shut down and restarted as a copy of Chat Roulette.

I wondering how much time will pass for other Omegle emerge? I mean something will fill the gap if there is business you know.

When I was a kid I dialed random numbers and made prank calls to strangers I didn’t know.

Everyone jokes about all the wild shit that happened on Omegle, but all that shit was never 'ok'.
Itt: sad and angry millennials who want to see an endless barrage of men jacking off

That's nuts! I thought that Omegle was text only. I had no idea that they paired you with people on video. WTF thought that was a good idea?!?
- It had video for a reeeaally long time.
  
  I may be misremembering but I feel like it always had video.
- Idk why this is being downvoted
  -1 it's his/er right not to know
  -2 "WTF thought that was a good idea?!?" Its a perfectly valid question
- I frequent Omegle too when it was text only, like more than a decade ago. Had a good time and didn't see a single dick.

Sad to see internet getting regulated. At this pace there would be requirements to link all accounts , everything with government identification documents. Oh its already happening slowly.....
Next thing you know there is no more partial anonymous sites and no one can do it without major legal challenges.
- That's not what this is about. Omegle wasn't following the regulations we already have, and therefore didn't get the benefits of protection the other sites do:
  In the US, social platforms are often protected by Section 230, a broad act that shields them from liability for the content their users post. But the judge in A.M.’s case found last July that Omegle’s design was at fault and it was not protected by Section 230: It could have worked to prevent matches between minors and adults before sexual content was even sent, the judge said.
  
  Well, the hard part is determining if declared age was authentic.
  
  What was the declared age?
  
  OK that makes sense.

Disgusting that the shutdown note tried to play off their serious issues with grooming and sexual abuse and claim they did a lot. Fuck that asshole.
Edit: Uh oh I’m being downvoted by his fan boys. The article (and successful lawsuit) say’s exactly what I’m saying and anyone who at scale enables mass sexual abuse of children is an asshole. Omegle had no other uses for most of its existence, hypotheticals sure but as the article mentions in practice it was overwhelmingly full of naked men trying to find women and children to interact with sexually. The site runner was flagrantly negligent.
Gosh I love certain types, you’ll rightly jump on a pastor who looked the other way for sexual abuse happening in his church as being responsible, yet a guy who runs a big website for years full of abuse is taken at his word as a sweet, innocent, helpless, benevolent advocate for a better web because he talks right. (Never mind he deliberately obfuscated the horrors happening on his website with his closing statement which people here ate up. It takes a lot to lose safe harbor)
- The design of the website clearly had serious issues. As example, the matchmaking should have been massively reworked.
  They can't account for people lying about their age. She started using the platform at 11. I'd be curious to know what profile info she did enter, and what age that displayed her as.
  As a child, ultimately her parents are responsible. They should be held accountable for putting their child in danger.
  The groomer was a predator, same as if lurking on the playground. They must be charged to the maximum possible.