- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.world
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I don’t intend to victim blame or defend any abusers here; this shit is vile and should not be tolerated, period.
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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.
You can parent your children all day long and everything is just fine at home. As soon as your kids are unleashed into the world of school, it’s anything goes. Your child is immediately subjected to all the poor and awful parenting that is outside your control. The only thing you can do is give them skills to navigate those situations. Sounds like @sunbeam60@lemmy.one did just that. Bravo.
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It’s almost like we should focus on educating them about how to responsibly use the Internet instead of trying to censor their access to it (which as you pointed out, basically never works).
Does anyone actually think shutting down one specific website will make a meaningful difference? Like… really? Did shutting down Napster stop piracy? Did shutting down Silk Road stop online drug sales?
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I guess you were never invited to the lemonparty then.
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Counterpoint, I clicked on many random links, and saw many things I probably “shouldn’t have” as a kid/teen, still turned out alright I think.
Even on Omegle in particular, after like one day, you gotta expect the dicks and move on lol
I frequented 4chan at age 13-16 so saw pretty much everything one could see on the Internet.
I’m not going to argue it was good or bad, but it’s not like it permanently fucked me up to the point of not being able to function as an adult later in life.
There’s also the privacy vs protection argument here, if sites require verification that you’re over 18 or w/e that then means you have to provide some sort of identification, what happens if that site is hacked? Or bad actors use that information to blackmail you in some fashion.
It’s a hard situation and I don’t know what the right answer truly is.
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Hot take, this guy had a great childhood so he expects every single parent to hover over their kids so that they don’t see something they aren’t supposed to. Oh, and if it’s an accident that’s still your failure as a parent.
Man, this is an awful take.
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Nice, defend yourself to me. I have no stake in this argument but you still feel compelled to prove yourself.
Fascinating.
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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?
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.
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?”
This is a bad analogy, a child can’t wander into a shady bar, late at night, while at home, in their room, while doing what they can to hide their activities from their parents, in the way that they can going on an inappropriate website.
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Shield a kid from the horrors of the world, the you’ll have a dumb adult in he future.
Teach your kids how to spot danger and how to handle all the world’s bullshit, then you’ll have a smart adult in the future.
Don’t baby your kids please.
This does not get into the fine details of what happened. They could have had something going, deceitfully or not, that convinced them they had no other choice. Anyway, that wasn’t the point I was making. I was pointing out that a child sneaking away to a shady bar in the middle of the night has much more serious implications of negligence than a kid going to an inappropriate website.
Bro. Analogies don’t need to be 100% realistic.
How many analogies have you read involving fictional characters? Or saying stuff like “that’s a catch-22”? Do you say “actually, that phrase comes from a work of fiction, so it’s invalid”?
“It’s like when Homer can’t stop eating donuts” - “Oh but Homer doesn’t exist. Checkmate!”
An ant carrying a leave is like a dude carrying three cars on his back. “Whoa! It’s impossible for a dude to carry that much weight!”
Well, The shady bar thing has happened before. So it’s not unrealistic and that wasn’t my point anyway. It simply does not fit the situation provided in the way the poster is trying to use it. There are far, far, greater implications of negligence for a child sneaking away, to a shady bar, in the middle of the night, than there is with a kid going on an inappropriate website.
Or even the opposite analogy. A guy goes to a bar that has an ID requirement. Has a few drinks. Meets a girl. They end up having a conversation and she and he hook up.
A week later, the cops show and the guy is charged with a sex crime because the girl was under 18 even though:
- By all appearances she was of a similar age to him and consenting
- She was in a place where only adults would be expected to attend
- The ID requirement of the establishment meant that she should have been well above 18
So what’s the liability of the bar, both towards allowing underage patrons and allowing them to hook up with older individuals while potentially intoxicated? Could they be sued and/or shut down? How does that story change if the bar was known to look the other way on underage patrons, or not properly check ID? How about if the girl in question was known by some of the staff? How about if the man knew that underage patrons were not uncommon.
Who has a case against the bar: the man; the girl or her parents; the police; or maybe all of them?
Nobody should applaud an establishment working under the rules and doing their best being shut down, but when that establishment has a known history of illegal activities on their platform/premises there’s a case that can be built against them.
That said, the internet is not a bad, and as a globally accessible platform with no physical presence validating ID and policing users/content can be quite difficult. Hell, we see that here on Lemmy with a not insignificant number of people who engage in illicit activities or troll .
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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.
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.
100% monitoring and control doesn’t exist. Your children will find a loophole to access unrestricted internet, it’s what they do.
Similarly, children will play in the street sometimes despite their parents’ best efforts to keep them in. (And yes, I would penalize Ford for building the trucks that have exploded in size and are more likely to kill children, but that’s a separate discussion.)
I get what you’re saying, I just think it’s wrong to say “parental responsibility” and dust off your hands like you solved the problem. A parent cannot exert their influence 24/7, they cannot be protecting their child 24/7. And that means that we need to rely on society to establish safer norms, safer streets, etc, so that there’s a “soft landing” when kids inevitably rebel, or when the parent is in the shower for 15 minutes.
100% monitoring and control doesn’t exist. Your children will find a loophole to access unrestricted internet, it’s what they do.
And it’s your job as a parent to ensure that they are equipped with good decision making skills so if/when they do encounter the ‘big world’ that they don’t fall for predators or scams.
And that means that we need to rely on society to establish safer norms, safer streets, etc, so that there’s a “soft landing” when kids inevitably rebel, or when the parent is in the shower for 15 minutes.
It’s not our job as society to grind down all the sharp edges of the world, especially when adults enjoy those sharp edges. It’s our job as society to create defined and expected levels of risk and enforce them. For example, we make drivers generally responsible for watching where they’re going, and we make crosswalks that are ‘guaranteed safe’ places to cross the street. So if you’re willing to take risks you can cross wherever, and if you want to be sure you’re safe there’s a crosswalk. The level of risk is your choice.
The thing with the Internet is that it’s there for everyone. You can’t establish ‘safer streets, soft landings’ on the Internet without restricting what consenting adults can get. And there’s currently no technology to verify someone’s age without seriously invading their privacy.
Filtering Internet is and should be a client side problem. Had this parent installed one of the numerous Internet filtering products produced for this exact purpose, the did wouldn’t have gotten groomed/abducted. Had this parent had a conversation with their kid about bad people online and offline, the kid would have told the rapist to fuck off and closed Omegle. There’s several things that the parent could and should have done which fall under the realm of basic expectations of parents, and they didn’t. That left their daughter open to being exploited by an awful person. NONE of that is Omegle’s fault.
But switching gears- you talk about soft landings. What do you think should be the answer here? Do you think a site like Omegle shouldn’t be allowed to exist? Where do you feel the responsibility of the parent and the site and society lies?
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.
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 didn’t say worse, I said it was the place they’d go to
But from my experience I’d say you’re lucky you haven’t been solicited or sent unrequested nude photos
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?
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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.
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.
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Source: my childhood
Jesus man, you can’t be serious. That is like the epitome of all the “I’m better than you” condescension I’ve seen so far, and I’m not even a quarter way down your profile page
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That’s a pretty flimsy line of thought. You’re losing your edge, bud.
Of course, the point is that only a narcissist would think to compare a child in this situation to themselves in an attempt to find fault, but that’s gonna go over your head because you’re just around to disagree.
Anyway, this is just another example. I’m not gonna engage more than that
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I honestly can’t tell if you’re still trolling or you really don’t get what’s wrong with what you said. It’s great. You’re an awful human being either way
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.
I don’t think anyone is blaming the child. All of the adults involved fucked up.
I don’t disagree. But the parents should be devastated thinking “we could have done more” because it’s a few YouTube videos away from a locked down device.
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 a network administrator. It’s easy. Do you homework. Watch a YouTube video or something ffs.
It’s not easy. Do you have teenage kids?
I’ve redirected DNS ports. I’m subscribed to an up to date set of filters. I’ve got screen time set up on phones and the kids have non-admin accounts on laptops. But it doesn’t matter.
It doesn’t matter because your kids will attend school. They will meet kids with unrestricted internet access. They will be sent shit in the 100 WhatsApp groups they are in, 40 of which have formed just this week (the old 40 groups?! Awmahgawd you’re not part of the old 40 groups are you? That was so last week!!). Snapchat, Facebook, TikTok, Instagram is FULL of shit you don’t want your kids to see. And you can refuse these for your kids - we were the last hold out amongst their class to give in to some of them, (although dammit I’m dying on the hill of Instagram resistance - they can install that shit when they’re 18; it’s like liquid self-loathing, injected straight into their veins).
Are you refusing your kids to attend that sleep over? I mean, Linda is a nice girl, but Rebecca’s parents couldn’t give a shit and she’ll be there too. Linda’s parents care, but what will Rebecca bring? Oh great, theyve been on Omegle and now I have to speak to my daughter about that hairy, sweaty naked man masturbating in front of them for 2 seconds before Linda and my daughter disconnected. I mean Rebecca thought it was hilarious, of course.
You cannot lock the world down enough that your kids are shielded. All you can do is try to raise them well, to recognise danger and to stand up for themselves.
But that means they’ll do dumb stuff and have some shocks along the way … and the same is true for the parents.
I’m all for Omegle’s right to exist. But for heaven sake there were 10 things they could have done to make it safer for kids.
I have clients who try to break free, yes.
No one can control devices that aren’t under their control, so in that case there’s nothing a parent can do and I wouldn’t place blame on them. It’s the other parents fault.
Who are you arguing is to blame now? What other parents?
Did you read the comment I was commenting on? Probably not. Probably just here to complain because you disagree with me. Blocked. 😘
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 😅
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
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.
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.
And that video was full of naked men masturbating, and curious kids, for just as long. It’s needed to be dealt with for waaaaaayyyyyy too long now.
I may be misremembering but I feel like it always had video.
It started just text
Fair enough. Maybe it had video by the time I discovered it or my memory is just failing me.
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.
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
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)
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The design of the website clearly had serious issues. As example, the matchmaking should have been massively reworked.
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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.
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As a child, ultimately her parents are responsible. They should be held accountable for putting their child in danger.
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The groomer was a predator, same as if lurking on the playground. They must be charged to the maximum possible.
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