Omegle is gone after years of inappropriate usage and lawsuits
posted Sunday Nov 12, 2023 by Scott Ertz
This week, the controversial online chat service Omegle was shut down. The service has long been a location for inappropriate behavior, including exposing kids to adult content and grooming kids. The site's owners claim that the service is just not feasible, but the real reason may be an agreement as part of a lawsuit settlement.
What was Omegle?
Omegle was a free, web-based online chat service that allowed users to socialize with others without the need to register. The service randomly paired users in one-on-one chat sessions where they could chat anonymously using the names "You" and "Stranger". It operated from 2009 to 20231. Users could choose to add their interests, and Omegle would try to pair a user with someone who had similar interests.
The site was created by then 18-year-old Leif K-Brooks of Vermont and was launched in March 2009. Less than a month after launch, Omegle garnered around 150,000 page views per day. In March 2010, the site introduced a video telephony feature. During the COVID-19 lockdowns, the site increased in popularity, particularly with teenagers.
A variety of people would use Omegle to spread the word about their art or performance. Musicians would use it to serenade strangers. Magicians would show off their magic skills. Even artists used the platform, with one famous artist sketching the people he encountered and showing them live in the chat. One special effects artist would create elaborate pranks involving ghosts and other jump scares.
Omegle's controversies
However, Omegle was subject to a variety of controversies, generally surrounding illegal content, discrimination, pornography, and use of the site by minors. Prior to early 2013, the site did not censor contributions through a profanity filter, and users had reported encountering nudity or sexual content on camera. After the filter went into place, however, things never really improved.
Because of the anonymous nature of the platform, people felt empowered to do terrible things. Nudity was an ever-present part of the platform. Whether you wanted to encounter it or not, you would eventually. The site's growing popularity with kids meant that kids were also being exposed to this content. In addition, this type of content was not always limited to adults. Kids also found that the anonymity gave them power to explore their growing urges.
The shutdown of Omegle
The involvement of kids, either on the viewing or showing end of the spectrum, meant that Omegle was legally on the hook for facilitating either the delinquency of a minor or distribution child exploitation material. A lawsuit in 2021 accused the company of pairing an 11-year-old with a sexual predator. Part of the settlement in the case involved the permanent shutdown of the service, as pointed out by journalist Jason Koebler.
On November 8, 2023, K-Brooks posted an announcement describing the challenges of running the site, and the ultimate decision to shut down the website. He stated,
There can be no honest accounting of Omegle without acknowledging that some people misused it, including to commit unspeakably heinous crimes. The battle for Omegle has been lost, but the war against the Internet rages on. Virtually every online communication service has been subject to the same kinds of attack as Omegle; and while some of them are much larger companies with much greater resources, they all have their breaking point somewhere.
The problem, of course, is that services like Twitter and Facebook have been used for the spreading of illegal content, the services have had a mechanism for shutting it down. With the combination of the anonymous aspect of the service with its live video chat, finding and stopping this type of thing becomes nearly impossible. The concept, like Snapchat, from the beginning was inevitably going to lead to this use. However, unlike Snapchat, the company never was able to stop the misuse and promote the proper use.
