Wow that was a great read. Leif comes across as very perceptive on multiple fronts here.
Unfortunately I think his warning about the internet ending up like “souped up TV” is looking more likely by the day.
Right now it’s quite easy to force a site or service to bend the knee to outside pressure. No matter how right or wrong that pressure is. People will go after hosting and ISPs, if that doesn’t work they’ll tie people up directly in the courts. You must provide real contact info and be willing to play ball if you operate on the old web.
Embracing encryption is the only thing I can think to do to avoid that. Which honestly kind of sucks, because while true anonymity would save sites like Omegle who act in good faith and police themsevles in a reasonable manner, others that don’t will also be protected. I think the pros out weigh the cons with anonymity but that is a hard pill to swallow for many.
So the American mainstream pedophile streaming website got shutdown? Time to rejoice! It will be a good day when Chaturbate, Snapchat, Instagram and such sites get shut down too. Maybe the “freedom” irresponsible assholes will learn what they ended up doing to the open web.
U r aware that until e2ee and online anonymity exists, pedos WILL be active online? Forget e2ee. Every social network (including Lemmy, Matrix, Mastodon) has an active pedo userbase.
There is absolutely no way to completely censor pedos. Hence, the only thing that we can do is educate children about consensual sex, rape, etc… Basically something like a vaccination against sexual assault. It wouldn’t work every time, but it would at least statistically reduce the probability of child sexual abuse. Unfortunately, this is all that we can do.
Omegle actively allowed that disease to flourish, and has been for over a decade a mainstream hub for pedophiles. This is not some recent phenomenon. Chaturbate, Snapchat and such services allow the same, allowing pedophilia and bestiality creators. You think that’s by coincidence? The Fediverse platforms you mentioned have nowhere near as many, or even percentage wise in the ballpark of what the forementioned mainstream platforms have. They are dominated by that audience. Abuse of platforms exists, but abuse is never allowed to dominate a significant proportion of userbase. Lemmy, for example, has probably only 15-20 such micro instances that are defederated very well by everyone else.
Are you aware of this, or are just gonna call it slippery slope and end the argument?
Snapchat is e2ee from what I understand. How are they supposed to monitor what goes on there? I’m unaware of the Chaturbate platform. As for Omegle, look at the sheer amount of users. How exactly were they supposed to block every single dick that popped up? It’s a problem of the registration-less, anonymous chat model rather than Omegle itself.
Omegle attracted a certain kind of crowd with the anonymity ripe for abuse, and let it exist since atleast 2014/15 at this point I’d say. I never used these services myself due to the stigma, but have been aware on surface level how this crap is operated. There have been no screenings or age verifications for minors video streaming anonymously, and Brooks (service owner) refused accountability. endsexualexploitation.org/…/omegle-needs-accounta…
The crux of it comes down to random matchings of stream users, no screenings or age verifications for minors, despite the service owner Leif Brooks being well aware that the service is used by minors in significant numbers since probably a decade at this point. And he refused accountability or putting in systems that would prevent minor abuse of this kind, even though the service had no encryption and was public.
So because minors can use the service, it’s a pedophile service? Is the internet a pedophile service too? There isn’t any age requirement or verification to use it. Should it be shut down as well?
I don’t see why a website should be required to make sure their users follow the law.
So because minors can use the service, it’s a pedophile service? Is the internet a pedophile service too?
Minors have used Omegle for only one purpose. Can you tell me where are all the college lectures, nursery videos, art and craft videos, funny videos or other types of safe content regarding children on Omegle? You are intentionally distorting the argument to make Omegle look like some innocent service. It solely has had sexual minor content for a decade at this point, besides other innuendo videos such as the ones you see on paid OnlyFans profiles (uncensored digital prostitution, solo sex et al).
Minors using the internet services does not make it pedophilic. Minors can use most of the internet safely. If you make another deranged argument like that, you will get the banhammer. Talk sensibly, I do not like using mod powers.
I beg to differ. Minors can’t safely use the internet at all, it’s the internet. Every depth of the human psyche is mirrored onto it, and frankly any guardian letting a child onto it without at the minimum strong primers on its dangers is derilict of their duty. Which might have been excusable 20-30 years ago when everybody was confused about what the internet even is, but not so much in 2023.
If you make another deranged argument like that, you will get the banhammer.
Just for clarity, I’m not the person you said this to, but I think if you are out here threatening people with bans over a rhetorical question, you might want to take a break. Nevermind the disconnect between you saying you haven’t used it at all but purpoting to know exactly what kind of “content” was on it these last years, when it didn’t even really have content in the usual sense of the word.
Minors can and have used more or less most of the internet safely. What is most of the internet? Services like Omegle or Chaturbate or Stripchat surely are not on it. Minors have used social media all this while, and other than what Facebook/Instagram on behest of US capitalist machinery has done to minors,
, most services do not abuse human psychology to this degree. However, children’s minds are highly neuroplastic until adulthood, and a lot of the internet is damaging to the psyche of children, which is an entirely different discussion. If that seems like flipflopping, it is because internet safety has various degrees to it and the definition of safety varies from healthy usage to consumerism to addiction to gray area to developing deviant persona and even illegal uses.
It is fairly known how peer pressure wins over parental control on minor access to internet, so the “parent’s duty” argument is very flaky and invalid. Education on things rest of the society is freely using is not very conducive to children at the age of puberty (12-16), and 18 is supposedly the adult age. So is the argument now going to be letting kids do whatever they want by the time they are 18? Or will this be decided upon a combination of evaluation of mental age using tests related to Asperger’s, neurodivergence, ADHD and so on? How frequently will these tests be taken by kids? Will there be exposure of the child to concepts like “absolute American freedom” and various forms of consumerism? Because that is what the child will get exposed to, as soon as he/she meets people outside home, or goes to the market with parents.
if you are out here threatening people with bans over a rhetorical question
The reason I did not is because I see the blurred line between rhetoric and “slippery slope” argument that usually follows such rhetoric questions. Their argument comes off as distasteful, even though a whole decade of video streaming exists as proof of Omegle being a key mainstream hub for minor sexual abuse content, with no kinds of methods used by the evasive service owner to combat it. Read the link I supplied in above comments regarding that.
I know the types of content there not because I frequented that shithole of a service, but because vigilantes and watchdogs tend to investigate services in limit and for analysis to warn the society about it. Would you also label academic researchers of CSAM as seeking pedophile content? (Rhetoric that I will end in next sentence) If no, that is because it is easy to see the difference with a little common sense between one “researching” for the “sauce” and one researching to understand how the whole mechanism of service works to warn society about the type of content there exists. You should be able to see clearly that I am quite interested in such discussions without the moderator part.
Minors can and have used more or less most of the internet safely. What is most of the internet? Services like Omegle or Chaturbate or Stripchat surely are not on it.
Well that claim is a bit arbitrary IMHO. For one I don’t see a reason to exclude those services you mentioned from being part of “most of the internet”. On the contrary, from what I see all of them are clearnet services, accessible to the public, so this extraordinary claim would need some evidence toward it I would say. Secondly the latter two are explicitly pornographic in nature, so I don’t really see the relevance towards the point of children being harmed by accessing them; They shouldn’t be there in the first place. There is of course a valid discussion about moderation to be had if they are used to distribute CSAM, but that seems orthogonal to the question of parental oversight of minors internet use.
Minors have used social media all this while, and other than what Facebook/Instagram on behest of US capitalist machinery has done to minors, […] most services do not abuse human psychology to this degree.
Again, only according to your arbitrary definition of what “most services” are. Basically all of social media is doing attention hacking, large swaths of of the gaming industry intentionally abuse dopamine cycles to sell worthless “digital goods”, the www is full of dark patterns in large part fuelled by advertisement delivery. I mean Meta is indubitably a front runner in the race of surveillance capitalism, but isn’t that an argument in favour of Omegle in the context of this discussion? Facebook/Instagram/WhatsApp are much more certainly than Omegle a part of “most of the internet” after all, however you define that, and they are a clear and present danger to children.
However, children’s minds are highly neuroplastic until adulthood, and a lot of the internet is damaging to the psyche of children, which is an entirely different discussion. If that seems like flipflopping, it is because internet safety has various degrees to it and the definition of safety varies from healthy usage to consumerism to addiction to gray area to developing deviant persona and even illegal uses.
I don’t think it is a different discussion at all, rather it’s exactly the crux of the issue. The psyche of children is vulnerable; How do we best protect it and who is in the best position to effectively do so?
It is fairly known how peer pressure wins over parental control on minor access to internet, so the “parent’s duty” argument is very flaky and invalid. Education on things rest of the society is freely using is not very conducive to children at the age of puberty (12-16), and 18 is supposedly the adult age.
It might not be a definitive argument, but certainly not invalid. A parent is chiefly responsible for the safety, education, and behaviour of their children in basically all other areas of life. This responsibility doesn’t go away because the neighbours kids peer pressured them into throwing stones through a window or drinking alcohol. Why should access to the internet be any different?
So is the argument now going to be letting kids do whatever they want by the time they are 18?
Well yes, but within the confines of legality obviously. That’s literally the status quo in most jurisdictions, isn’t it?!
Or will this be decided upon a combination of evaluation of mental age using tests related to Asperger’s, neurodivergence, ADHD and so on? How frequently will these tests be taken by kids?
Gee I hope not. That sounds like the abyss below the slippery slope. But I don’t think anybody argued for that.
Will there be exposure of the child to concepts like “absolute American freedom” and various forms of consumerism? Because that is what the child will get exposed to, as soon as he/she meets people outside home, or goes to the market with parents.
Again, I don’t see the relevance to the Omegle situation. This is just life, the world is a dangerous place and while society can help by creating laws and such in the end the ones in the best position to safeguard their children according to their own world view will be the parents. Of course that is a duty in which every individual parent will inevitably fail by some metric, but so will society. Case in point, many children will be exposed to “absolute American freedom and various forms of consumerism” inside their own homes already, so if that’s your metric as a parent the only one who could ever protect a child from that is you, by preparing them for their inevitable confrontation with those concepts and hoping they take that lesson to heart.
Their argument comes off as distasteful, even though a whole decade of video streaming exists as proof of Omegle being a key mainstream hub for minor sexual abuse content, with no kinds of methods used by the evasive service owner to combat it. Read the link I supplied in above comments regarding that.
Yeah you claimed variously that it is a key part of Omegle “content”, for which I don’t see much corroborating evidence in the links you provided. Both the BBC story and the NCOSE piece seem to reference the same case of an 11 year old girl using the service unsupervised.
Which leads me to why I’m taking issue with the statement of Omegle having content. It doesn’t in the sense most people would understand that. It revolves around having a conversation with an absolute stranger, and either side of this conversation can record it or publish it. There is no content here unless one participant creates it and distributes it elsewhere than Omegle, or takes other content and distributes it on Omegle. Everything on Omegle is content in the same sense as a phone call is content, to which I would argue it isn’t, at least not inherently. It’s an ephemeral conversation unless a participant records it.
It might be content in the sense argued by the law and the court in the “A.M Vs Omegle” case, but that apparently ended in the motion to dismiss being partly granted and partly denied, which to me as a layperson sounds like a win for Omegle, at least temporarily.
Furthermore you say Omegle and Brooks didn’t do anything against the abuse, but this is in direct contradiction to what Brooks claims in the message in the OP:
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.
And this is all besides the point that giving an 11 year old unsupervised access to Omegle is kind of the same as letting them out into the shady part of town to talk to random strangers (when you ignore the added risk of physical harm there of course). That’s what the website was principally about, meeting random strangers. And if a parent were to let their child do that unsupervised in offline life we would put at least part of the blame for any harm on them.
The internet wasn’t designed with the safety of children in mind, in fact not with anybodies safety in mind. Saying that it should be is an opinion, but in any case not the current reality. That leaves the majority of responsibility for the safety of children on the parents. And there is a bunch of things they can do, like not giving them networked devices in the first place, or restricting network access with whitelists, or educating them before the parents or others do give access. Yes, this parental control breaks down in social settings, but that is the case for a lot of different aspects of life and I don’t see how purging everything dangerous for children from the public internet is either a possible or even a desirable solution to this problem.
Take for example what you and the NCOSE argued for, age verification. The state of the art for that on many explicitly pornographic services is a simple dialogue asking if the user is of legal age in their jurisdiction. The infrastructure to do otherwise, which would require a governmentally issued digital ID of some kind, doesn’t exist in most countries let alone globally. Never mind the implications this would have for user privacy. Some services use a certain identifier so that their service can be automatically filtered, but that again leaves the parents with the responsibility to set up and maintain said filter. And in the end there will not be a way around that at all, unless you purposely rebuild the internet with a level of control it simply is not engineered to provide currently.
You should be able to see clearly that I am quite interested in such discussions without the moderator part.
Well the one who brought that into the discussion was you. Not to diminish your efforts, but I stand by what I said on the matter earlier.
I went on omegle not too long ago actually and the thing I remember was that the text version of the website was inundated with bots.
You had to skip through maybe 10-15 bots before you would find that one real person, and even then it was hit or miss whether they would actually want to stay and have a conversation.
Another thing: the constant “asl” as the top of every conversation; it’s like people were trying to use it as a hook-up / dating / sexting app rather than it’s actual purpose of connecting with people from around the world. I think that mission got lost somewhere.
Can someone explain in short what problem people had about Omegle?
Was it that you can say things (and show things) there to a random person without any good possibility to trace it back to you because it’s anonymous and more “temporary” then something like Lemmy for example?
Or was it just a witch hunt without any real reasonable structure?
It’s crazy to sometimes stop to think about how many nice things we could have if it wasn’t for pedophiles. Not a joke either, actually give it some thought.
A lot of people also use pedophiles as a basis for their nefarious plans. “Protect the children” is a rallying cry of the alt right, despite how many child rapists exist in the cult.
For sure but there are legit cultural things too that are affected. Say you walk by a playground and a kid falls off a tree or something and hurts himself, you can’t see the kids parents anywhere and consoling him would risk you being perceived as a pervert. For consoling a kid that hurt itself. Like jesus what the fuck
That is not restricted to alt-right. That is more of a trope of the centrists and even most capitalist leftists. Alt-right prefers freedom and anonymity without consequences instead, to abuse it and get away with bad deeds.
The “alt-right” never think about the children nor have they done anything with children as an excuse. That was the rallying cry of the “Compassionate Conservatives” and the televangelists who banned video games and rap music in the 90’s and also why you have to click “yes I’m 18” on many websites including lemmy. “Think of the children” is just what authoritarians use as an excuse to push their agenda whether that is ensuring the State has a monopoly on violence, or trying to ban things they don’t like.
That seems like normal conservative stuff to me. No need to call it the “alt-right” which in itself is a normalizing term that provides cover for the conservatives culture warriors that have existed forever.
Alt-right is a term coined by a horrible presidential candidate as she attempted to draw a false distinction between a “good conservative” and a “bad conservative.” But the distinction is without a difference.
Yeah I remember using it and you had a bunch of creeps on there that sadly aren’t unique to omegle, but once one site gets a reputation of any kind its hard to beat.
Omegle is a bit of a unique case due to their persistent non-action. Most places, if people start grooming children or broadcasting child porn, they’ll start banning offenders at the very lest. Omegle, nah.
At one point, they put a warning splash screen “Careful: there are pedophiles that use this” or something like that, but they took the warning down after a while. And eventually they did officially say that you can’t use the site if you’re a minor, but of course it was just enforced through the honour system.
Those are literally the only two actions they ever took to address criminal content and behaviour.
I checked it out a few times over the years, but was put off by the behavior of some of the people. The concept is fascinating because, as the founder mentions in his letter, there IS some safety in anonymity and expressing yourself more authentically without the physical risk is possible.
Humans mostly have “acceptable behavior” filters in public, but this system also stripped many of those away. Which led to a lot of people incorrectly assuming they could do bad stuff on this platform without consequences.
I think it’s too bad this is the way it’s got to go. Despite not really being a user, Omegle feels like part of Internet 1.5.
I used it only once and actually had a bit of small talk with someone from the Philippines. It was very exciting that I could just talk to someone from the other end of the world just like this.
IMO there should be something like Omegle offered in public school to students for free around the world. You’d have a student account that’s tied to a verified school account, and you could be randomly paired with other students your age around the world. Omegle, when users are responsible, and moderation is manageable, seems like it has a very high value-for-society to complexity ratio.
This idea is ripe for exploitation. If even one creep gets a hold of the creds for a verified student account, congrats now a bunch of minors are being shown a grown man’s penis
It would be trivial to roll it out in a way that it can only be accessed from school grounds or while an adult is supervising. The adult could even be in charge of “clicking next” if we really didn’t trust the integrity of our system. I agree that it would be difficult to control access from home on a child’s own device given that children are notoriously terrible at creating passwords and maintaining a secure system, and I’m not sure that something like a yubikey would fare any better since it could be lost or stolen.
But I feel like you’re not taking a moment to argue with yourself, because we already have systems in place that only students are allowed access to, so that’s not the part that needs solving, nor would it be a novel attack surface.
Imagine for a moment, the magical ability for students at a school to walk onto a playground where they find students from all over the world also playing. The potential for learning and understanding would be incredible. Learning about new languages, customs, locations, current events, everything, could be done just by walking over and talking to them. If such a room existed, it shouldn’t just be an option, it should be something we make time for our kids to do, just like recess.
The point is, if the barrier to communication with your peers all over the world is as low as possible, then we open the door for international relations on a scale the world has never seen before. We don’t need to have kids isolated to small towns for their entire lives, growing up to vote for border walls because they’re scared of the “terrorists”. Instead we would have a world full of people who are able to see people in other countries as people, if not actual friends. And I don’t think it’s enough for this to be a private service that some schools dabble in, I think it should be publicly funded and encouraged internationally.
Yeah, there are challenges in the implementation, but compared to other things we spend money on, I think the value proposition is easily justified.
I used Omegle a lot when it was still text-only chat more that a decade ago. Overall I had a positive experience, It was fun talking to strangers from all over the world. I never tried their video chat though, so I can’t say if it’s actually that horrible. Back then when it was text-only, so at least I don’t have to worry about seeing some dicks. But if child predators favor the site now, even if Omegle went back to text-only, they’ll still find a way to trick kids just like in other chat platforms.
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