I can't say that I'm surprised by this, but I guess I'm disappointed. I didn't use Omegle beyond its original release, but I liked the idea of being able to talk to random people about something...
I can't say that I'm surprised by this, but I guess I'm disappointed. I didn't use Omegle beyond its original release, but I liked the idea of being able to talk to random people about something --- seems like a cool way to learn something, or have a conversation you might not otherwise have. In reality Omegle was always deeply depressing to me... it seemed like such a good opportunity for people to make something positive, but it was unfortunately always a bit of a cesspit. The fact that it was kind of a mess was predictable, but I guess I just wish we could have nice things, you know?
Wasn't too hard to meet cool people if you gave Omegle your interests (the site tried to pair you with people who wrote down the same interests). I had a lot of success with philosophy, religion,...
Wasn't too hard to meet cool people if you gave Omegle your interests (the site tried to pair you with people who wrote down the same interests). I had a lot of success with philosophy, religion, and books. Off the top of my head I remember an extremely kind muslim man from Uzbekistan (which I didn't even know existed at the time, much less it being Muslim. Actually I seriously considered converting for a little while bc. of the impression he made on me), an Irish forest ranger getting off the night shift (he had to kill a deer family :(), a really smart pantheist who somehow had pages and pages of his unpublished metaphysical writings on hand in seconds to answer my questions (he was also really into psychedelics if you can believe it), lots of really nice Filipinos, lots of Indian engineers (one was working at the worlds first solar powered airport I think?). I'll miss this site a lot, it got me through some dark times...
Ah that's cool :). I didn't use the interests feature since it was introduced later. It is nice when something like that can make things work out better for having a conversation. Like Kind Words...
Ah that's cool :). I didn't use the interests feature since it was introduced later.
It is nice when something like that can make things work out better for having a conversation. Like Kind Words is interesting and not toxic at all, and there's a bunch of little choices that I think have helped it thrive. A big thing is probably just that there's a pay wall, so you probably don't want to spend money on it just to get banned after trolling a few people... But also I suspect that the fact that everybody is anonymous and that you cannot get replies to what you've written helps make it boring to be a troll, I think.
I'm very interested in social spaces online that encourage positivity... It's difficult because it seems like you have to really limit things. Another example is Journey. There's just not really any way to interact negatively with another player in that game.
A fun thing I did in Omegle was join it from Bigscreen VR. It was a bunch of avatars sitting in a virtual theater, and we'd join the video feed of strangers. So it was a really unique experience...
A fun thing I did in Omegle was join it from Bigscreen VR. It was a bunch of avatars sitting in a virtual theater, and we'd join the video feed of strangers. So it was a really unique experience because those of us in VR were also from all over the world.
Oh no. That sucks. Does anyone know what they mean by saying Omegle has been faced with attacks? The long post did make me a little sad and nostalgic for the internet that once was. There was so...
Oh no. That sucks.
Does anyone know what they mean by saying Omegle has been faced with attacks?
The long post did make me a little sad and nostalgic for the internet that once was. There was so much hope for it to bring people together anonymously (if you want to) and unconstrained by large companies.
Although I do wonder what creators who depend a lot on Omegle are going to do now.
I don't know how I feel about this reasoning. Abusers exist everywhere on the internet, I don't think I've ever been a part of a community online ever since I first logged on as a kid that didn't...
I don't know how I feel about this reasoning. Abusers exist everywhere on the internet, I don't think I've ever been a part of a community online ever since I first logged on as a kid that didn't have abusive individuals. I've been wondering how to solve this for a while, because while I avoided being targeted a lot of my friends weren't so lucky.
Closing Omeagle won't solve anything. There are hundreds and thousands of ways to meet random people online and make these kinds of connections; forums, games, random online discords that kids can just get into. Do we ban those too? This trial doesn't solve anything, if anything the fact that Omeagle could easily trace abusers made it better than most options where you're shit out of luck if you want to find them.
This is more a result, I think, of not knowing the dangers. Nowadays parents hopefully know to warn their children against this kind of behaviour online and in general, I think making sure your child has the tools they need to communicate when something like this is happening to them, and to offer them a comforting environment to do so.
I don't know that it is enough to say they know the dangers, because it's a difficult line to straddle. I'm not a parent but I could imagine as a parent, you can't cut off access completely, but...
This is more a result, I think, of not knowing the dangers. Nowadays parents hopefully know to warn their children against this kind of behaviour online and in general, I think making sure your child has the tools they need to communicate when something like this is happening to them, and to offer them a comforting environment to do so.
I don't know that it is enough to say they know the dangers, because it's a difficult line to straddle. I'm not a parent but I could imagine as a parent, you can't cut off access completely, but if you're not technically inclined enough, you can't necessarily fine tune restrictions to account for the dangers while allowing otherwise essential access. Even when it comes to just educating kids, I don't think a lot of parents are aware of the specificity of the dangers to be able to tell their kids what to look for exactly. It kind of becomes like the "stranger danger" thing where you just might end up instilling fear of everything because you have no way to distinguish at a finer level.
There was some kind of suggestion out there somewhere before along these lines from some company or another, but it would be interesting if there was some kind of hardware identifier that parents could enable for devices their children are using where sites that have or should have some kind of age-restrictions can rely on this identifier to deny access to kids. I guess it would have to work locally on the device to prevent bad actors from using this information to target kids, so that would mean the site must transmit something that indicates its for certain ages and the device would be responsible for denying it if the device was set as age restricted (or the profile on a shared device). I think it might have been Pornhub that had a suggestion like this. It certainly only works for site operators who are willing to comply with the law, but I think the vast majority of them are, there's just no good way to do it. Most parents aren't in a position to do it without easier controls, and if part of the setup of a device is putting in your childs age (not necessarily even exact birthdate) and/or selecting some kind of basic restriction, then it's easier for parents without going overboard.
No it won't stop bad actors, and in the Omegle lawsuit linked in the above comment it may not necessarily prevent that exact scenario depending on a few factors, but it could. If Omegle already asks kids if they're above 13 or 18 or whatever and they select yes, Omegle or any other site in that situation can't do much else. But it would be simple enough to potentially avoid this scenario by participating in this kind of system and denying kids access to the site based on the device restriction. Then the girl in this scenario wouldn't be able to get on this site to begin with.
It does have a potential knock on effect of possibly making many sites overly-restrictive against kids, because if you don't restrict your content, there is likely going to be a higher standard applied to your controls in how those kids interact with anything on your platform. If Omegle or such in this hypothetical assumed its platform was not intended for adults and thus doesn't restrict access from kids, then the moment some jackass flashes their penis on screen Omegle opens themselves up to severe consequences. Basically anything with user generated content or interaction would likely end up getting restricted out of the reach of kids because that's something the platforms can't control on an instantaneous level. Allowing even one single brief interaction could be enough for a predator to lure a kid into a different environment with less restrictions. This knock-on effect could be a good thing overall, but depends on how far it goes.
I know some people will say kids will find a way around it. Sure there is probably some that will, and I guess the benefit out of that is maybe they learn a beneficial life skill along the way of breaking out of the parental controls. But there are some that won't find a way around it. Just like people say if someone really wants drugs, they'll find a way to get them. Well I wouldn't say I really want certain drugs, but if they were more easily available, I'd probably try some of them. I guess in a way there are some I do really want but they're next to impossible to get as far as I know, so again, apparently sometimes restrictions work, on adults and children.
I think that it's more important to focus on making sure kids are ready to go online. We already have a place where the majority of children spend their time; having schools and parents talking to...
I think that it's more important to focus on making sure kids are ready to go online. We already have a place where the majority of children spend their time; having schools and parents talking to their kids about this kind of thing is the way to lower the risk of being groomed.
From my experience, a lot of the time the abusers don't realize their situation until it's too late and they don't feel like they can tell anyone anymore because of shame/blackmail. The faster a victim can recognize strange behaviour the better. I don't believe that parents should monitor every single thing their child does, but it's still a responsibility in my mind to make sure they're being safe (and that they know what being safe means). Maybe most parents aren't equipped for this kind of education, but that's exactly why I mentioned schools.
One of the reasons I managed to avoid these kinds of people, I think, was that I knew they existed. I knew there were people online that don't have my best interests at heart, just like I knew not to cross the road at a red light.
I think it's a well-intentioned plan, but this type of thing could be said about many things in our society that could be addressed this way and they aren't. There's a myriad of reasons why...
I think that it's more important to focus on making sure kids are ready to go online. We already have a place where the majority of children spend their time; having schools and parents talking to their kids about this kind of thing is the way to lower the risk of being groomed.
I think it's a well-intentioned plan, but this type of thing could be said about many things in our society that could be addressed this way and they aren't. There's a myriad of reasons why depending on the subject, but a relatively simple technical control is far easier at providing a baseline to work from. From what I observe of others in general, I suspect there's a lot of parents and teachers (just adults in general really) that aren't equipped to have those conversations at a meaningful level, and they themselves need educated on how those dangers take form online. It's not to say that this suggestion shouldn't happen, I'm just saying that this suggestion could apply to so many things and unfortunately it does not happen. I have a potentially pessimistic outlook on schools in general as they're so hamstrung by many things that their purpose of educating is so hampered that most good intentions won't survive implementation anywhere near intact.
Basically I just think what I'm discussing is more practical on a wide scale than what you're discussing, even if it's not necessarily as ideal.
Kids aren't dumb, and a control is just a barrier to get around for many, not a proper lesson to teach them of the dangers. I never liked the "because it's bad for you" explanation as a kid....
but a relatively simple technical control is far easier at providing a baseline to work from.
Kids aren't dumb, and a control is just a barrier to get around for many, not a proper lesson to teach them of the dangers. I never liked the "because it's bad for you" explanation as a kid. Adults do a lot of things bad for them, how are they setting a good example?
I have a potentially pessimistic outlook on schools in general as they're so hamstrung by many things that their purpose of educating is so hampered that most good intentions won't survive implementation anywhere near intact.
Someone's gotta learn. And if the teachers and parents won't learn, the kids will, sometimes in ways that irrevocably damage the kid.
This isn't some doomspeak, that's simply the current fact of life. If adults are too wrapped up in bureaucracy and choose to intervene when it's too late (i.e misdirected lawsuits aimed at the very very indirectly responsible) what do you think kids will take out of that?
I chose the wording that you quoted very carefully, "baseline to work from". I don't pretend like it's the end-all-be-all, other things can be tried in addition to that, but I think it's really...
Kids aren't dumb, and a control is just a barrier to get around for many, not a proper lesson to teach them of the dangers. I never liked the "because it's bad for you" explanation as a kid. Adults do a lot of things bad for them, how are they setting a good example?
I chose the wording that you quoted very carefully, "baseline to work from". I don't pretend like it's the end-all-be-all, other things can be tried in addition to that, but I think it's really the baseline to start with, not pretending like a technical problem shouldn't also be solved with a technical solution. Part of the problem is technical in nature, because before the technology, we had a solution, which no solution is ever 100% perfect, people made fake IDs or borrowed their brother/sister's ID or straw purchased etc. but generally speaking it worked far better than what exists after this technology has come around. Physical government ID cards are not really a proper solution for this problem, and while balancing other things of privacy etc., you want to start out easy which is again why I chose the word "baseline" for this.
I'm ambivalent because a) we treat the internet as a public space, for the most part and b) we don't require ID to exist in the public space (you know, until you are a minority and the wrong...
ut I think it's really the baseline to start with, not pretending like a technical problem shouldn't also be solved with a technical solution
I'm ambivalent because a) we treat the internet as a public space, for the most part and b) we don't require ID to exist in the public space (you know, until you are a minority and the wrong authority decides you need to be "taught a lesson". Giving BOTD here). Ben Franklin's Liberty and Safety quote rings like Big Ben here. And I've simply always been on the liberty side.
If we had some equivalent of a "public park" on the internet, I wouldn't be as worried about private spaces closing up. But that park is sites like 4chan and there's no government sacntioned park ranger operating it from dawn to dusk. The metaphor quickly breaks down once we make such parks international as well.
The way I suggested a solution was an opt-in for parents to apply to a device. So the restrictions are applied to children whose parents have given them a device and don't want them to access this...
The way I suggested a solution was an opt-in for parents to apply to a device. So the restrictions are applied to children whose parents have given them a device and don't want them to access this content. This isn't substantially different than a parent making rules for their kid not to go to the public park in terms of liberties being affected.
Yes, I replied to another comment that happened to be yours and gave my thoughts on that opt-in OS device there. To expand on that metaphor: I think it's fine if some parents don't want a kid to...
Yes, I replied to another comment that happened to be yours and gave my thoughts on that opt-in OS device there.
To expand on that metaphor: I think it's fine if some parents don't want a kid to go to the park, some are fine but only with supervision, and some let their kid go free. But it's very hard to mark a park as 18+ even if 18+ content can occur there (which is de facto discouraged, but many things will slip), so I'm not sure if a park level ID is the solution.
and my answer remains none. If parents can't, teachers won't, and role models don't exist to teach the dangers, the kids become the teachers through experience. we can't expect every single entity...
Raising kids to be informed and safe is always good advice, but many parents won't, and it just won't work on many kids. The question of what responsibility or safeguards platforms should take is a reasonable one to ask.
and my answer remains none. If parents can't, teachers won't, and role models don't exist to teach the dangers, the kids become the teachers through experience. we can't expect every single entity in the world to protect against every danger unless We (as western society) are fine revoking privacy as a whole and more or less requiring government ID to interact online. Many asian countries do this (not necessarily for every interaction, but quite a few big sites), so it's not an unheard of requirement.
And that still won't solve the problem, simply push the twitters of tomorrow into the silk road.
I'm sad to see Omegle shut down, and generally the loss of optimism and walled gardening of the internet. My generation grew up with random popups of cartel beheadings and "3 guys 1 hammer", and at least from what I've heard that's less of a thing... which is good.
It's not less of a thing, it's simply less talked about because the internet converged into a half dozen websites who ban that stuff.
But the internet is also hundreds of times larger, if not thousands. I wager that content is more accessible than ever but also less easy to google (but still not hard to find).
We require a government ID to interact IRL, so why would this be a big problem? Genuinely asking. We're fine with it in persona.
and my answer remains none. If parents can't, teachers won't, and role models don't exist to teach the dangers, the kids become the teachers through experience. we can't expect every single entity in the world to protect against every danger unless We (as western society) are fine revoking privacy as a whole and more or less requiring government ID to interact online.
We require a government ID to interact IRL, so why would this be a big problem? Genuinely asking. We're fine with it in persona.
no we don't. Some private establishments that serve alcohol may require it, but I never need to show my ID to anyone in a casual settings. There's a soft requirement to carry your license when...
We require a government ID to interact IRL
no we don't. Some private establishments that serve alcohol may require it, but I never need to show my ID to anyone in a casual settings. There's a soft requirement to carry your license when driving, but until you get pulled over you're fine.
As someone who hasn't gone to a bar since college, the last time I had to show my ID in public was when buying super glue. Turns out you need to be 18 to buy that stuff, go figure.
so why would this be a big problem?
it's a societal difference, I'll admit that. in Asian countries you have more stuff wanting to be linked to your government ID and having your ID be casually presentable, for example. But for the US in particular, there's a whole rabbit hole about the rejection of government ID that that ends with the weak social security number which is hamfisted to be an unofficial national ID.
for me personally, I'm embedded in tech as a career and am just way too aware of how the sausage is made. I really don't want much of anything linked to my real world self linked on private servers if I can help it.
In a world where everything online is a global surveillance network, forcing it to be tied to your legal identity means that bad actors just have easy access to your home address. For all the bad...
In a world where everything online is a global surveillance network, forcing it to be tied to your legal identity means that bad actors just have easy access to your home address.
For all the bad actors online, we have to remember: Your children are much more likely to be abused by trusted people they know in person than any stranger online.
Well, I don't find that scenario to be relevant. Blackmailing someone with AI generated images isn't something that exclusively harms children, and is a "risk" everywhere on the Internet...
Well, I don't find that scenario to be relevant. Blackmailing someone with AI generated images isn't something that exclusively harms children, and is a "risk" everywhere on the Internet regardless of age.
Children will go everywhere, obviously, but they're not as stupid as we make them out to be. Speaking as someone who has experienced the Internet in this way not too long ago, even when you do things that you know you shouldn't be doing, there are red lines that you know to look out for if you're told. Of course you can be stupid - I've done some stupid things - but never beyond the red lines, because I understood from my parents that I could get hurt.
From my experience, online harassers rely on children and teens that haven't been shown these red lines or haven't gotten a full understanding of why they're bad (for whatever reason). Of course it won't fix everything and isn't the only thing we can do for online safety, but I think it's the responsible thing to do regardless. We know these dangers exist, some of us have seen them firsthand, so in my mind it is irresponsible to let kids go online without talking about it. Tech-oriented solutions only throw the issue under the rug until kids find ways around those solutions, whereas education circumvents the issue by allowing kids to be online while aware of danger. Like I said before, it's similar to knowing not to cross a street with a red light.
The reason I'm writing this is exactly because parents can be oblivious and education systems take years to catch up. We have to advocate for these kinds of things, and resist attempts to prevent children from being taught about the world around them because of concern they may be hurt. Time and time again it has shown that the opposite is true.
I guess that's just one more reason to establish actually useful/verifiable age confirmations online. So that in case a minor uses a service such as Omegle, they can then keep extra records of...
What suggests Omegle could easily trace abusers? I see a mention of Omegle handing over IP addresses, but that's not exactly foolproof or asking much, and the focus of the story doesn't appear to have been located from that:
I guess that's just one more reason to establish actually useful/verifiable age confirmations online. So that in case a minor uses a service such as Omegle, they can then keep extra records of their chat partners and run extra verification tools to ensure the minor cannot be exposed to abuse.
Sure, this ultimately comes close to parental content tools, and could be solved that way, too. But unless ISPs enable an ISP-side parental toolset that works for all websites in some weird we're-all-establishing-a-standard-way, I cannot see that work. Plus as always, for profit companies won't do shit unless forced by law.
The problem is only big companies will be able to easily comply with those kinds of regulations, so it kills small and scrappy companies. Challenging legal requirements are usually good for...
The problem is only big companies will be able to easily comply with those kinds of regulations, so it kills small and scrappy companies. Challenging legal requirements are usually good for established businesses and bad for everyone else.
But doesn't the inability of smaller companies to abide by such regulations also automatically imply that they'd be the ones to violate non-enforced goals in the first place, to skimp on cost?...
But doesn't the inability of smaller companies to abide by such regulations also automatically imply that they'd be the ones to violate non-enforced goals in the first place, to skimp on cost?
Because either they can comply and still be profitable - in which case they could just as well do that when it's a requirement - or they cannot generate enough money to do so, in which case why were they even trying to run the service if they can't even do the required minimum to protect users?
I guess what I'm trying to say is: Running something like Omegle is hard if you want your users to be safe from even moderate amounts of harassment. You need a lot of resources to even attempt that, because the problem is so complicated. It's natural that if protection is done as requirements - which, to prevent cutting corners for profits it really ought to be - then this precludes smaller companies and indivuals from even trying, just like, say, a complex theoretical math challenge would preclude virtually everyone from even trying.
I think there's lazy/dumb legal requirements, and then smart ones, and we need to better push towards smart ones rather than lazy/dumb ones. The lazy ones offload all the burden onto the site...
I think there's lazy/dumb legal requirements, and then smart ones, and we need to better push towards smart ones rather than lazy/dumb ones. The lazy ones offload all the burden onto the site operator or service provider etc. and don't set up a framework for parties of all sizes to be able to work together.
For example, in another comment I mentioned there could be some framework between device/OS and websites where a site includes a tag that defines its age restrictions when its attempting to be accessed and the device has opt-in settings, which the parent would need to opt-in to either at time of purchase of device or any time thereafter, basically turning on an element of parental control by identifying the user of that device as an age-restricted user and the device would deny access without notifying the website of anything, it just simply wouldn't communicate further with the site. Now one could argue that is a lot of technical implementation, but for those making OSes, the complexity of that is probably fairly low compared to the overall complexity of an OS. The complexity added to the site operator is including the tag.
However what some legislators in the US (and probably some other countries) are doing is forcing site operators to require government issued IDs and such to verify age. So people who try to go to porn sites or such now need to put a copy of their government issued ID on their computer, transmit it over the internet to who knows, and then possibly have that ID stored somewhere for all anyone knows and even if not by the site operator, there's still a lot more room for malicious actors to get hold of these. It's like they didn't learn from how Social Security Numbers became a total shitshow because they get passed around through everyone and inevitably it falls into the wrong hands.
So this lazy legislation tries to force an old framework, physical government issued identification cards, into a new system of technology that it's not designed for, and then offload all the burden onto site operators and tons of other consequences onto the citizens. Now partly I think some of this is just religious anti-porn legislation intended to control people under the guise of age verification, but some of it may actually just be the fact that we have 70/80 year old legislators everywhere who probably still have AOL emails if they have any personal email at all.
So that type of example is where big companies can only comply, and even then most of them don't want to deal with that if they don't have to and in some cases they've just blocked access to some of these backward states rather than comply, but the first type I mentioned is one where at least site operators aren't forced to be big companies to comply.
in all fairness, there are many applications for all OS's that accomplish this. But a parent who can't find these solutions won't use a native one. I don't want to nitpick, but the very obvious...
For example, in another comment I mentioned there could be some framework between device/OS and websites where a site includes a tag that defines its age restrictions when its attempting to be accessed and the device has opt-in settings, which the parent would need to opt-in to either at time of purchase of device or any time thereafter
in all fairness, there are many applications for all OS's that accomplish this. But a parent who can't find these solutions won't use a native one.
I don't want to nitpick, but the very obvious hole here (and the ones worried about the most) is in fact social media. this solution may be fine on a site level, but how do we define further down? Do we block all of twitter because some parts are 18+? do we granularly identify what is 18+ on each tweet, even unmarked? are swear words 18+? is an M/R/17+ rated piece of media 18+ (by definition, no. But we're hitting an edge case here). Do we Youtube kids it, inaccurately identify what content is "safe" (letting happy tree friends and South Park clips in, of course. cartoons are always for kids, right?) and disable comments on sanctioned content?
There is a lot of subteties to consider that makes an OS level solution feel heavy handed.
As is being discussed in the antitrust Google search trial, native/default is a powerful and influential thing. I also mentioned in my prior comment the possible knock on effect of sites with user...
But a parent who can't find these solutions won't use a native one.
As is being discussed in the antitrust Google search trial, native/default is a powerful and influential thing.
I also mentioned in my prior comment the possible knock on effect of sites with user generated content, and it could possibly be beneficial if that were to happen where it becomes overly restrictive and kids aren't as involved in such things.
What I think you are missing is that not having some basic practical solutions to this, even if it could be imperfect for kids, is that without it, sites like Omegle don't exist for adults anymore. It might suck that kids can't participate, but it's even worse when no one can.
I simply don't think that will happen. kids (and people in general) naturally want to talk to their friends. And they will find a way even if it's in the recesses of 4chan that will probably...
if that were to happen where it becomes overly restrictive and kids aren't as involved in such things.
I simply don't think that will happen. kids (and people in general) naturally want to talk to their friends. And they will find a way even if it's in the recesses of 4chan that will probably somehow be kicking in 205X. My generation didn't have that option growing up, but the genie is long out of the bottle.
What I think you are missing is that not having some basic practical solutions to this, even if it could be imperfect for kids, is that without it, sites like Omegle don't exist for adults anymore.
Maybe for some countries. The day an adult gets tried by the US government over not providing ID to some website is going to be a very bombastic one, to say the least. the US resisted proper national ID for decades, centuries over much more frivolous reasons. The ability for a consenting adult to access what is currently a public good sure does make that argument much stronger.
I'm not too worried. I think the realistic worst case scenario is that the big tech sites close up and that's good enough for the people up top. But as you may see from me being on Tildes, I don't necessarily need a community as large as Omeagle to thrive and satify my curiosities. It's a shame, but I've been long adapting to a net where everything converges and I scavenge to the remaining refugee communities outside those oases. that extra effort required to find such places might even be enough to re-kindle the old feel of those 90's/old 00's communities.
Again I addressed this in my prior comments. This argument of some people can get past a restriction so that means the restriction is pointless is nonsense. In cases where everyone can get past...
I simply don't think that will happen. kids (and people in general) naturally want to talk to their friends. And they will find a way even if it's in the recesses of 4chan that will probably somehow be kicking in 205X. My generation didn't have that option growing up, but the genie is long out of the bottle.
Again I addressed this in my prior comments. This argument of some people can get past a restriction so that means the restriction is pointless is nonsense. In cases where everyone can get past the restriction then maybe it is a fair argument to make, but there are some restrictions that not everyone can get past them. Can some people get heroin? Sure. Can I get heroin? I have yet to come across any heroin. I wouldn't know how to get it. So restrictions on heroin, while clearly not perfect since some people can get it, are effective enough that some other people can't get them.
Maybe for some countries. The day an adult gets tried by the US government over not providing ID to some website is going to be a very bombastic one, to say the least. the US resisted proper national ID for decades, centuries over much more frivolous reasons. The ability for a consenting adult to access what is currently a public good sure does make that argument much stronger.
Pornhub has pulled out of multiple states rather than comply with age-verification laws.
So adults are being restricted access to porn because of these laws. While you stated "adult gets tried by the US government for not providing ID", and that's clearly not this case here, it also seems like you jumped way ahead to begin with by making that the bar to clear. Isn't being denied access enough? Clearly it's not since some adults in these states support the idea that they should not be able to access something.
unfortunately. And the result of that was obvious and inevitable: https://www.culturalcurrents.institute/insights/utah-pornhub-blocked And we're seeing the federal government themselves step in,...
Some states have already passed laws that have prevented adults access to porn sites.
While you stated "adult gets tried by the US government for not providing ID", and that's clearly not this case here,
That is fair, but I do think it's the worst case scenario to punish the middleman for not intrusively invading the privacy of every visitor to its site. That means malicious actors have government sanctioned proof to grab your data (while conveniently, many states are still catching up to how to manage such privacy data)
Isn't being denied access enough?
depends on if you want results or accountability. For the latter, sure. Pornhub is accountable and needs to change course during current debates. Results wise, we see people are still going to view porn anyway so it seems to be a failure. And I don't think a VPN is this complex hack to setup for determined kids.
Unless this is done quite badly this is not how this actually works. Rather, a key is generated from your ID that serves as an identifier. You can then query an API - in my case by the gov - with...
So people who try to go to porn sites or such now need to put a copy of their government issued ID on their computer, transmit it over the internet to who knows, and then possibly have that ID stored somewhere for all anyone knows and even if not by the site operator, there's still a lot more room for malicious actors to get hold of these.
Unless this is done quite badly this is not how this actually works.
Rather, a key is generated from your ID that serves as an identifier. You can then query an API - in my case by the gov - with a specific question where the key is specific to that question. "Is this <key> over the age of 18?". The API will reply "Yes" (or no). But that's it. Sure someone who gets the key can query the API for the boolean reply whether you're 18+ or not, but that's all they can do with it.
It varies by state. Many laws simply state "commercially reasonable method of age verification" or refer to a database, and a lot of them mention government issued ID. Also of course I'm talking...
It varies by state. Many laws simply state "commercially reasonable method of age verification" or refer to a database, and a lot of them mention government issued ID. Also of course I'm talking about the ones where it's done quite badly, not the ones where it's done appropriately. That was the whole point of my comment.
In some form or another, many of these are making it so people are having their government issued ID into some database somewhere possibly, and inevitably this database is going to get hacked and leaked out and sold to various bad actors. While it might technically be possible to do this without storing the ID, how do you know whether they are or not? As an end-user, there's no way to know.
Who's reasoning? AFAIK there has been no decision over the lawsuit. If someone I knew was in the shoes of the woman in the article, I would definitely encourage her to sue. It's not the job of the...
I don't know how I feel about this reasoning.
Who's reasoning? AFAIK there has been no decision over the lawsuit.
If someone I knew was in the shoes of the woman in the article, I would definitely encourage her to sue. It's not the job of the wronged party to determine if a lawsuit is correct or not, that's why it's being brought to court.
Well, considering Omegle has shut down in reaction to this lawsuit, and likely many others we haven't heard of, I'd say that even without a court decision it's been a pretty influential action on...
Well, considering Omegle has shut down in reaction to this lawsuit, and likely many others we haven't heard of, I'd say that even without a court decision it's been a pretty influential action on the part of the offended party. The owner's parting letter hints to that pretty clearly with the line about blaming the platform for the actions of a few outliers.
Some lawsuits companies can wave away and deal with, but this kind of rep isn't something that a company like Omegle wants to (or perhaps can't) deal with. I don't know exactly what goes through the owner's mind but I don't imagine this kind of thing is fun to deal with (not that abuse is).
Would I encourage her to sue if I knew her? Probably not. The internet is the internet and if Omegle doesn't exist then a different place will that enables this exact thing to happen. At the end of the day what happened to this woman is horrifying, but unless we plan on setting a precedent where it's okay to sue places that never claim to grant us safety in the first place, we should start talking about actual solutions like educating our children and being involved in their lives. Kids who know to recognize abusive behaviour are far less likely to be abused.
If you're online you have to know the dangers, and if you're a minor you hopefully have someone to guide you. If not, that is again not good, but also not something you'll solve by suing Omegle. So, the reasoning I'm referring to is the conclusion that a lawsuit would somehow be the answer to this problem.
Mind you I don't intend to go "think of the companies!" From a capitalistic point of view, it's just that growing up very involved in the internet I've come to believe that our legal system just isn't built for this kind of technology. We don't have good ways of talking about and legislating it, partly because of judiciaries that are out of touch, and so we end up in this kind of situation where a lawsuit that might not have even been won can trigger a site that has been a staple of internet culture to go down, ignoring the thousands of similar websites.
I disagree with your assessment. The onus isn't, and should never be, on a person bringing a lawsuit to consider externalities or the broader effects of the lawsuit. If your lawyer thinks you have...
but unless we plan on setting a precedent where it's okay to sue places that never claim to grant us safety in the first place
So, the reasoning I'm referring to is the conclusion that a lawsuit would somehow be the answer to this problem.
I disagree with your assessment.
The onus isn't, and should never be, on a person bringing a lawsuit to consider externalities or the broader effects of the lawsuit. If your lawyer thinks you have a reasonable case and you have the money to sue, you should probably do it. The rest is for the courts to sort out.
If the lawsuit proceeds, rather than pass judgment on a barebones press release like us, the judge is going to actually get to examine the particulars of such a case and decide if it has merit. We can't even come close to saying with 100% certainty that a lawsuit is frivolous because we don't have all the details.
This sort of reminds me of the infamous McDonald's lawsuit for coffee that was too hot -- people immediately constructed a false set of beliefs about the lawsuit (admittedly aided by McDonald's) when the realities of the case were much more sympathetic to the victim.
Oh... well that explains why Harry Mack said his recent Omegle Bars #100 was the last one he was ever going to do, lol. He must have somehow known this was coming... unless it was publicly...
Oh... well that explains why Harry Mack said his recent Omegle Bars #100 was the last one he was ever going to do, lol. He must have somehow known this was coming... unless it was publicly announced beforehand and I was not aware of that?
End of an era (of occasionally being surprise exposed to random penises while trying to chat with strangers). :P
Well damn, this sucks. I mean, I've never used it myself but I have watched a lot of content from creators that use it. Such as the amazing pianist Frank Tedesco.
Well damn, this sucks.
I mean, I've never used it myself but I have watched a lot of content from creators that use it. Such as the amazing pianist Frank Tedesco.
Losing Omegle is a bit sad, I had fun with asking people questions in that "view two people discuss your question" option. However, the explanation for its closure and the post itself is even...
Losing Omegle is a bit sad, I had fun with asking people questions in that "view two people discuss your question" option.
However, the explanation for its closure and the post itself is even sadder. This paragraph particularly stuck with me:
In recent years, it seems like the whole world has become more ornery. Maybe that has something to do with the pandemic, or with political disagreements. Whatever the reason, people have become faster to attack, and slower to recognize each other’s shared humanity. One aspect of this has been a constant barrage of attacks on communication services, Omegle included, based on the behavior of a malicious subset of users.
This just resonates because it reflects a good portion of interactions and attitudes I see nowadays. I think the world has gotten a bit more cruel and cynical in recent years, both online and off. It seems the owner just couldn't take the stress of defending himself and Omegle repeatedly against outright hostile attacks on top of all the other responsibilities that come with operating Omegle and trying to ensure it's as safe as possible.
As someone who values empathy above all else, it's been frustrating to see people just look at only the absolute worst in each other and hurl insult and threats so easily. Feels like you need a thick skin to do almost anything on a public level these days, whether it be creating websites or simply posting drawings. Just makes me sad.
I don't want this to veer into a capitalistic rant, but it's a shame there's so much anger in the world and we hurl it at each other, each of which is powerless to change the world at large. If we...
I don't want this to veer into a capitalistic rant, but it's a shame there's so much anger in the world and we hurl it at each other, each of which is powerless to change the world at large. If we could focus it on the right authorities we could see change surprisingly quickly, but it can be hard to think on a grander scale than what's in front of your eyes.
I'm only surprised it took that long. 99.9% of it was scammers, prostitution, and people saying slurs/waving dicks, and then disconnecting. A cesspool, regardless of all these advanced AI and...
I'm only surprised it took that long. 99.9% of it was scammers, prostitution, and people saying slurs/waving dicks, and then disconnecting. A cesspool, regardless of all these advanced AI and other mentioned moderation methods.
There is only so much consolation and hope one can take from this 0.1%. It was clearly overwhelming and it reached its logical conclusion.
I used to use Chatroulette and Omegle back in college when they were first launched and it was such a heyday of activity and experimentation that it was worth sifting through the dicks to find...
I used to use Chatroulette and Omegle back in college when they were first launched and it was such a heyday of activity and experimentation that it was worth sifting through the dicks to find real, genuine connections as well.
I can’t imagine any platform today that can offer such immediate, real, and global connection.
People found a way to eventually spoof camera feeds with recordings. People found a way to workaround geofencing with VPNs. It’s not hard to imagine people will soon spoof genuine human interactions with ChatGPT.
What I miss most was the nearly assured fact that another human was at “the other end of the pipe”, so to speak. The wait-time for a response could likely be because someone else was busy thinking up a fun quip…or because the early internet took ages to transmit information from thousands of miles away.
That's a damn shame. I spent a lot of time on Omegle during the long Melbourne lockdowns of 2020-21, and then an injury that kept me housebound for the better part of a year when most people were...
That's a damn shame. I spent a lot of time on Omegle during the long Melbourne lockdowns of 2020-21, and then an injury that kept me housebound for the better part of a year when most people were returning to social spaces. With Music and Jamming tags, playing for, with and played to by musicians around the world, Omegle played a non-trivial role in maintaining my mental health for two years of near-total isolation.
This is terribly sad. I absolutely loved Omegle, and I used it for hundreds, if not thousands of hours over the years. I began a great new friendship there just last week. RIP. There are other...
This is terribly sad. I absolutely loved Omegle, and I used it for hundreds, if not thousands of hours over the years. I began a great new friendship there just last week.
RIP. There are other random chat websites, but none as good as Omegle was. I will miss it.
I can't say that I'm surprised by this, but I guess I'm disappointed. I didn't use Omegle beyond its original release, but I liked the idea of being able to talk to random people about something --- seems like a cool way to learn something, or have a conversation you might not otherwise have. In reality Omegle was always deeply depressing to me... it seemed like such a good opportunity for people to make something positive, but it was unfortunately always a bit of a cesspit. The fact that it was kind of a mess was predictable, but I guess I just wish we could have nice things, you know?
Wasn't too hard to meet cool people if you gave Omegle your interests (the site tried to pair you with people who wrote down the same interests). I had a lot of success with philosophy, religion, and books. Off the top of my head I remember an extremely kind muslim man from Uzbekistan (which I didn't even know existed at the time, much less it being Muslim. Actually I seriously considered converting for a little while bc. of the impression he made on me), an Irish forest ranger getting off the night shift (he had to kill a deer family :(), a really smart pantheist who somehow had pages and pages of his unpublished metaphysical writings on hand in seconds to answer my questions (he was also really into psychedelics if you can believe it), lots of really nice Filipinos, lots of Indian engineers (one was working at the worlds first solar powered airport I think?). I'll miss this site a lot, it got me through some dark times...
Ah that's cool :). I didn't use the interests feature since it was introduced later.
It is nice when something like that can make things work out better for having a conversation. Like Kind Words is interesting and not toxic at all, and there's a bunch of little choices that I think have helped it thrive. A big thing is probably just that there's a pay wall, so you probably don't want to spend money on it just to get banned after trolling a few people... But also I suspect that the fact that everybody is anonymous and that you cannot get replies to what you've written helps make it boring to be a troll, I think.
I'm very interested in social spaces online that encourage positivity... It's difficult because it seems like you have to really limit things. Another example is Journey. There's just not really any way to interact negatively with another player in that game.
A fun thing I did in Omegle was join it from Bigscreen VR. It was a bunch of avatars sitting in a virtual theater, and we'd join the video feed of strangers. So it was a really unique experience because those of us in VR were also from all over the world.
Oh no. That sucks.
Does anyone know what they mean by saying Omegle has been faced with attacks?
The long post did make me a little sad and nostalgic for the internet that once was. There was so much hope for it to bring people together anonymously (if you want to) and unconstrained by large companies.
Although I do wonder what creators who depend a lot on Omegle are going to do now.
I found this on the HN discussion, pretty sure he's talking about this: Omegle: Suing the website that matched me with my abuser.
I don't know how I feel about this reasoning. Abusers exist everywhere on the internet, I don't think I've ever been a part of a community online ever since I first logged on as a kid that didn't have abusive individuals. I've been wondering how to solve this for a while, because while I avoided being targeted a lot of my friends weren't so lucky.
Closing Omeagle won't solve anything. There are hundreds and thousands of ways to meet random people online and make these kinds of connections; forums, games, random online discords that kids can just get into. Do we ban those too? This trial doesn't solve anything, if anything the fact that Omeagle could easily trace abusers made it better than most options where you're shit out of luck if you want to find them.
This is more a result, I think, of not knowing the dangers. Nowadays parents hopefully know to warn their children against this kind of behaviour online and in general, I think making sure your child has the tools they need to communicate when something like this is happening to them, and to offer them a comforting environment to do so.
I don't know that it is enough to say they know the dangers, because it's a difficult line to straddle. I'm not a parent but I could imagine as a parent, you can't cut off access completely, but if you're not technically inclined enough, you can't necessarily fine tune restrictions to account for the dangers while allowing otherwise essential access. Even when it comes to just educating kids, I don't think a lot of parents are aware of the specificity of the dangers to be able to tell their kids what to look for exactly. It kind of becomes like the "stranger danger" thing where you just might end up instilling fear of everything because you have no way to distinguish at a finer level.
There was some kind of suggestion out there somewhere before along these lines from some company or another, but it would be interesting if there was some kind of hardware identifier that parents could enable for devices their children are using where sites that have or should have some kind of age-restrictions can rely on this identifier to deny access to kids. I guess it would have to work locally on the device to prevent bad actors from using this information to target kids, so that would mean the site must transmit something that indicates its for certain ages and the device would be responsible for denying it if the device was set as age restricted (or the profile on a shared device). I think it might have been Pornhub that had a suggestion like this. It certainly only works for site operators who are willing to comply with the law, but I think the vast majority of them are, there's just no good way to do it. Most parents aren't in a position to do it without easier controls, and if part of the setup of a device is putting in your childs age (not necessarily even exact birthdate) and/or selecting some kind of basic restriction, then it's easier for parents without going overboard.
No it won't stop bad actors, and in the Omegle lawsuit linked in the above comment it may not necessarily prevent that exact scenario depending on a few factors, but it could. If Omegle already asks kids if they're above 13 or 18 or whatever and they select yes, Omegle or any other site in that situation can't do much else. But it would be simple enough to potentially avoid this scenario by participating in this kind of system and denying kids access to the site based on the device restriction. Then the girl in this scenario wouldn't be able to get on this site to begin with.
It does have a potential knock on effect of possibly making many sites overly-restrictive against kids, because if you don't restrict your content, there is likely going to be a higher standard applied to your controls in how those kids interact with anything on your platform. If Omegle or such in this hypothetical assumed its platform was not intended for adults and thus doesn't restrict access from kids, then the moment some jackass flashes their penis on screen Omegle opens themselves up to severe consequences. Basically anything with user generated content or interaction would likely end up getting restricted out of the reach of kids because that's something the platforms can't control on an instantaneous level. Allowing even one single brief interaction could be enough for a predator to lure a kid into a different environment with less restrictions. This knock-on effect could be a good thing overall, but depends on how far it goes.
I know some people will say kids will find a way around it. Sure there is probably some that will, and I guess the benefit out of that is maybe they learn a beneficial life skill along the way of breaking out of the parental controls. But there are some that won't find a way around it. Just like people say if someone really wants drugs, they'll find a way to get them. Well I wouldn't say I really want certain drugs, but if they were more easily available, I'd probably try some of them. I guess in a way there are some I do really want but they're next to impossible to get as far as I know, so again, apparently sometimes restrictions work, on adults and children.
I think that it's more important to focus on making sure kids are ready to go online. We already have a place where the majority of children spend their time; having schools and parents talking to their kids about this kind of thing is the way to lower the risk of being groomed.
From my experience, a lot of the time the abusers don't realize their situation until it's too late and they don't feel like they can tell anyone anymore because of shame/blackmail. The faster a victim can recognize strange behaviour the better. I don't believe that parents should monitor every single thing their child does, but it's still a responsibility in my mind to make sure they're being safe (and that they know what being safe means). Maybe most parents aren't equipped for this kind of education, but that's exactly why I mentioned schools.
One of the reasons I managed to avoid these kinds of people, I think, was that I knew they existed. I knew there were people online that don't have my best interests at heart, just like I knew not to cross the road at a red light.
I think it's a well-intentioned plan, but this type of thing could be said about many things in our society that could be addressed this way and they aren't. There's a myriad of reasons why depending on the subject, but a relatively simple technical control is far easier at providing a baseline to work from. From what I observe of others in general, I suspect there's a lot of parents and teachers (just adults in general really) that aren't equipped to have those conversations at a meaningful level, and they themselves need educated on how those dangers take form online. It's not to say that this suggestion shouldn't happen, I'm just saying that this suggestion could apply to so many things and unfortunately it does not happen. I have a potentially pessimistic outlook on schools in general as they're so hamstrung by many things that their purpose of educating is so hampered that most good intentions won't survive implementation anywhere near intact.
Basically I just think what I'm discussing is more practical on a wide scale than what you're discussing, even if it's not necessarily as ideal.
Kids aren't dumb, and a control is just a barrier to get around for many, not a proper lesson to teach them of the dangers. I never liked the "because it's bad for you" explanation as a kid. Adults do a lot of things bad for them, how are they setting a good example?
Someone's gotta learn. And if the teachers and parents won't learn, the kids will, sometimes in ways that irrevocably damage the kid.
This isn't some doomspeak, that's simply the current fact of life. If adults are too wrapped up in bureaucracy and choose to intervene when it's too late (i.e misdirected lawsuits aimed at the very very indirectly responsible) what do you think kids will take out of that?
I chose the wording that you quoted very carefully, "baseline to work from". I don't pretend like it's the end-all-be-all, other things can be tried in addition to that, but I think it's really the baseline to start with, not pretending like a technical problem shouldn't also be solved with a technical solution. Part of the problem is technical in nature, because before the technology, we had a solution, which no solution is ever 100% perfect, people made fake IDs or borrowed their brother/sister's ID or straw purchased etc. but generally speaking it worked far better than what exists after this technology has come around. Physical government ID cards are not really a proper solution for this problem, and while balancing other things of privacy etc., you want to start out easy which is again why I chose the word "baseline" for this.
I'm ambivalent because a) we treat the internet as a public space, for the most part and b) we don't require ID to exist in the public space (you know, until you are a minority and the wrong authority decides you need to be "taught a lesson". Giving BOTD here). Ben Franklin's Liberty and Safety quote rings like Big Ben here. And I've simply always been on the liberty side.
If we had some equivalent of a "public park" on the internet, I wouldn't be as worried about private spaces closing up. But that park is sites like 4chan and there's no government sacntioned park ranger operating it from dawn to dusk. The metaphor quickly breaks down once we make such parks international as well.
The way I suggested a solution was an opt-in for parents to apply to a device. So the restrictions are applied to children whose parents have given them a device and don't want them to access this content. This isn't substantially different than a parent making rules for their kid not to go to the public park in terms of liberties being affected.
Yes, I replied to another comment that happened to be yours and gave my thoughts on that opt-in OS device there.
To expand on that metaphor: I think it's fine if some parents don't want a kid to go to the park, some are fine but only with supervision, and some let their kid go free. But it's very hard to mark a park as 18+ even if 18+ content can occur there (which is de facto discouraged, but many things will slip), so I'm not sure if a park level ID is the solution.
and my answer remains none. If parents can't, teachers won't, and role models don't exist to teach the dangers, the kids become the teachers through experience. we can't expect every single entity in the world to protect against every danger unless We (as western society) are fine revoking privacy as a whole and more or less requiring government ID to interact online. Many asian countries do this (not necessarily for every interaction, but quite a few big sites), so it's not an unheard of requirement.
And that still won't solve the problem, simply push the twitters of tomorrow into the silk road.
It's not less of a thing, it's simply less talked about because the internet converged into a half dozen websites who ban that stuff.
But the internet is also hundreds of times larger, if not thousands. I wager that content is more accessible than ever but also less easy to google (but still not hard to find).
We require a government ID to interact IRL, so why would this be a big problem? Genuinely asking. We're fine with it in persona.
no we don't. Some private establishments that serve alcohol may require it, but I never need to show my ID to anyone in a casual settings. There's a soft requirement to carry your license when driving, but until you get pulled over you're fine.
As someone who hasn't gone to a bar since college, the last time I had to show my ID in public was when buying super glue. Turns out you need to be 18 to buy that stuff, go figure.
it's a societal difference, I'll admit that. in Asian countries you have more stuff wanting to be linked to your government ID and having your ID be casually presentable, for example. But for the US in particular, there's a whole rabbit hole about the rejection of government ID that that ends with the weak social security number which is hamfisted to be an unofficial national ID.
for me personally, I'm embedded in tech as a career and am just way too aware of how the sausage is made. I really don't want much of anything linked to my real world self linked on private servers if I can help it.
In a world where everything online is a global surveillance network, forcing it to be tied to your legal identity means that bad actors just have easy access to your home address.
For all the bad actors online, we have to remember: Your children are much more likely to be abused by trusted people they know in person than any stranger online.
Well, I don't find that scenario to be relevant. Blackmailing someone with AI generated images isn't something that exclusively harms children, and is a "risk" everywhere on the Internet regardless of age.
Children will go everywhere, obviously, but they're not as stupid as we make them out to be. Speaking as someone who has experienced the Internet in this way not too long ago, even when you do things that you know you shouldn't be doing, there are red lines that you know to look out for if you're told. Of course you can be stupid - I've done some stupid things - but never beyond the red lines, because I understood from my parents that I could get hurt.
From my experience, online harassers rely on children and teens that haven't been shown these red lines or haven't gotten a full understanding of why they're bad (for whatever reason). Of course it won't fix everything and isn't the only thing we can do for online safety, but I think it's the responsible thing to do regardless. We know these dangers exist, some of us have seen them firsthand, so in my mind it is irresponsible to let kids go online without talking about it. Tech-oriented solutions only throw the issue under the rug until kids find ways around those solutions, whereas education circumvents the issue by allowing kids to be online while aware of danger. Like I said before, it's similar to knowing not to cross a street with a red light.
The reason I'm writing this is exactly because parents can be oblivious and education systems take years to catch up. We have to advocate for these kinds of things, and resist attempts to prevent children from being taught about the world around them because of concern they may be hurt. Time and time again it has shown that the opposite is true.
I guess that's just one more reason to establish actually useful/verifiable age confirmations online. So that in case a minor uses a service such as Omegle, they can then keep extra records of their chat partners and run extra verification tools to ensure the minor cannot be exposed to abuse.
Sure, this ultimately comes close to parental content tools, and could be solved that way, too. But unless ISPs enable an ISP-side parental toolset that works for all websites in some weird we're-all-establishing-a-standard-way, I cannot see that work. Plus as always, for profit companies won't do shit unless forced by law.
The problem is only big companies will be able to easily comply with those kinds of regulations, so it kills small and scrappy companies. Challenging legal requirements are usually good for established businesses and bad for everyone else.
But doesn't the inability of smaller companies to abide by such regulations also automatically imply that they'd be the ones to violate non-enforced goals in the first place, to skimp on cost?
Because either they can comply and still be profitable - in which case they could just as well do that when it's a requirement - or they cannot generate enough money to do so, in which case why were they even trying to run the service if they can't even do the required minimum to protect users?
I guess what I'm trying to say is: Running something like Omegle is hard if you want your users to be safe from even moderate amounts of harassment. You need a lot of resources to even attempt that, because the problem is so complicated. It's natural that if protection is done as requirements - which, to prevent cutting corners for profits it really ought to be - then this precludes smaller companies and indivuals from even trying, just like, say, a complex theoretical math challenge would preclude virtually everyone from even trying.
I think there's lazy/dumb legal requirements, and then smart ones, and we need to better push towards smart ones rather than lazy/dumb ones. The lazy ones offload all the burden onto the site operator or service provider etc. and don't set up a framework for parties of all sizes to be able to work together.
For example, in another comment I mentioned there could be some framework between device/OS and websites where a site includes a tag that defines its age restrictions when its attempting to be accessed and the device has opt-in settings, which the parent would need to opt-in to either at time of purchase of device or any time thereafter, basically turning on an element of parental control by identifying the user of that device as an age-restricted user and the device would deny access without notifying the website of anything, it just simply wouldn't communicate further with the site. Now one could argue that is a lot of technical implementation, but for those making OSes, the complexity of that is probably fairly low compared to the overall complexity of an OS. The complexity added to the site operator is including the tag.
However what some legislators in the US (and probably some other countries) are doing is forcing site operators to require government issued IDs and such to verify age. So people who try to go to porn sites or such now need to put a copy of their government issued ID on their computer, transmit it over the internet to who knows, and then possibly have that ID stored somewhere for all anyone knows and even if not by the site operator, there's still a lot more room for malicious actors to get hold of these. It's like they didn't learn from how Social Security Numbers became a total shitshow because they get passed around through everyone and inevitably it falls into the wrong hands.
So this lazy legislation tries to force an old framework, physical government issued identification cards, into a new system of technology that it's not designed for, and then offload all the burden onto site operators and tons of other consequences onto the citizens. Now partly I think some of this is just religious anti-porn legislation intended to control people under the guise of age verification, but some of it may actually just be the fact that we have 70/80 year old legislators everywhere who probably still have AOL emails if they have any personal email at all.
So that type of example is where big companies can only comply, and even then most of them don't want to deal with that if they don't have to and in some cases they've just blocked access to some of these backward states rather than comply, but the first type I mentioned is one where at least site operators aren't forced to be big companies to comply.
in all fairness, there are many applications for all OS's that accomplish this. But a parent who can't find these solutions won't use a native one.
I don't want to nitpick, but the very obvious hole here (and the ones worried about the most) is in fact social media. this solution may be fine on a site level, but how do we define further down? Do we block all of twitter because some parts are 18+? do we granularly identify what is 18+ on each tweet, even unmarked? are swear words 18+? is an M/R/17+ rated piece of media 18+ (by definition, no. But we're hitting an edge case here). Do we Youtube kids it, inaccurately identify what content is "safe" (letting happy tree friends and South Park clips in, of course. cartoons are always for kids, right?) and disable comments on sanctioned content?
There is a lot of subteties to consider that makes an OS level solution feel heavy handed.
As is being discussed in the antitrust Google search trial, native/default is a powerful and influential thing.
I also mentioned in my prior comment the possible knock on effect of sites with user generated content, and it could possibly be beneficial if that were to happen where it becomes overly restrictive and kids aren't as involved in such things.
What I think you are missing is that not having some basic practical solutions to this, even if it could be imperfect for kids, is that without it, sites like Omegle don't exist for adults anymore. It might suck that kids can't participate, but it's even worse when no one can.
I simply don't think that will happen. kids (and people in general) naturally want to talk to their friends. And they will find a way even if it's in the recesses of 4chan that will probably somehow be kicking in 205X. My generation didn't have that option growing up, but the genie is long out of the bottle.
Maybe for some countries. The day an adult gets tried by the US government over not providing ID to some website is going to be a very bombastic one, to say the least. the US resisted proper national ID for decades, centuries over much more frivolous reasons. The ability for a consenting adult to access what is currently a public good sure does make that argument much stronger.
I'm not too worried. I think the realistic worst case scenario is that the big tech sites close up and that's good enough for the people up top. But as you may see from me being on Tildes, I don't necessarily need a community as large as Omeagle to thrive and satify my curiosities. It's a shame, but I've been long adapting to a net where everything converges and I scavenge to the remaining refugee communities outside those oases. that extra effort required to find such places might even be enough to re-kindle the old feel of those 90's/old 00's communities.
Again I addressed this in my prior comments. This argument of some people can get past a restriction so that means the restriction is pointless is nonsense. In cases where everyone can get past the restriction then maybe it is a fair argument to make, but there are some restrictions that not everyone can get past them. Can some people get heroin? Sure. Can I get heroin? I have yet to come across any heroin. I wouldn't know how to get it. So restrictions on heroin, while clearly not perfect since some people can get it, are effective enough that some other people can't get them.
Some states have already passed laws that have prevented adults access to porn sites.
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2023/08/08/age-law-online-porn-00110148
So adults are being restricted access to porn because of these laws. While you stated "adult gets tried by the US government for not providing ID", and that's clearly not this case here, it also seems like you jumped way ahead to begin with by making that the bar to clear. Isn't being denied access enough? Clearly it's not since some adults in these states support the idea that they should not be able to access something.
unfortunately. And the result of that was obvious and inevitable: https://www.culturalcurrents.institute/insights/utah-pornhub-blocked
And we're seeing the federal government themselves step in, so we're in for a very bumpy ride here: https://variety.com/2023/digital/news/pornhubs-texas-age-verification-law-violates-first-amendment-ruling-1235709902/
That is fair, but I do think it's the worst case scenario to punish the middleman for not intrusively invading the privacy of every visitor to its site. That means malicious actors have government sanctioned proof to grab your data (while conveniently, many states are still catching up to how to manage such privacy data)
depends on if you want results or accountability. For the latter, sure. Pornhub is accountable and needs to change course during current debates. Results wise, we see people are still going to view porn anyway so it seems to be a failure. And I don't think a VPN is this complex hack to setup for determined kids.
Unless this is done quite badly this is not how this actually works.
Rather, a key is generated from your ID that serves as an identifier. You can then query an API - in my case by the gov - with a specific question where the key is specific to that question. "Is this <key> over the age of 18?". The API will reply "Yes" (or no). But that's it. Sure someone who gets the key can query the API for the boolean reply whether you're 18+ or not, but that's all they can do with it.
It varies by state. Many laws simply state "commercially reasonable method of age verification" or refer to a database, and a lot of them mention government issued ID. Also of course I'm talking about the ones where it's done quite badly, not the ones where it's done appropriately. That was the whole point of my comment.
In some form or another, many of these are making it so people are having their government issued ID into some database somewhere possibly, and inevitably this database is going to get hacked and leaked out and sold to various bad actors. While it might technically be possible to do this without storing the ID, how do you know whether they are or not? As an end-user, there's no way to know.
Who's reasoning? AFAIK there has been no decision over the lawsuit.
If someone I knew was in the shoes of the woman in the article, I would definitely encourage her to sue. It's not the job of the wronged party to determine if a lawsuit is correct or not, that's why it's being brought to court.
Well, considering Omegle has shut down in reaction to this lawsuit, and likely many others we haven't heard of, I'd say that even without a court decision it's been a pretty influential action on the part of the offended party. The owner's parting letter hints to that pretty clearly with the line about blaming the platform for the actions of a few outliers.
Some lawsuits companies can wave away and deal with, but this kind of rep isn't something that a company like Omegle wants to (or perhaps can't) deal with. I don't know exactly what goes through the owner's mind but I don't imagine this kind of thing is fun to deal with (not that abuse is).
Would I encourage her to sue if I knew her? Probably not. The internet is the internet and if Omegle doesn't exist then a different place will that enables this exact thing to happen. At the end of the day what happened to this woman is horrifying, but unless we plan on setting a precedent where it's okay to sue places that never claim to grant us safety in the first place, we should start talking about actual solutions like educating our children and being involved in their lives. Kids who know to recognize abusive behaviour are far less likely to be abused.
If you're online you have to know the dangers, and if you're a minor you hopefully have someone to guide you. If not, that is again not good, but also not something you'll solve by suing Omegle. So, the reasoning I'm referring to is the conclusion that a lawsuit would somehow be the answer to this problem.
Mind you I don't intend to go "think of the companies!" From a capitalistic point of view, it's just that growing up very involved in the internet I've come to believe that our legal system just isn't built for this kind of technology. We don't have good ways of talking about and legislating it, partly because of judiciaries that are out of touch, and so we end up in this kind of situation where a lawsuit that might not have even been won can trigger a site that has been a staple of internet culture to go down, ignoring the thousands of similar websites.
I disagree with your assessment.
The onus isn't, and should never be, on a person bringing a lawsuit to consider externalities or the broader effects of the lawsuit. If your lawyer thinks you have a reasonable case and you have the money to sue, you should probably do it. The rest is for the courts to sort out.
If the lawsuit proceeds, rather than pass judgment on a barebones press release like us, the judge is going to actually get to examine the particulars of such a case and decide if it has merit. We can't even come close to saying with 100% certainty that a lawsuit is frivolous because we don't have all the details.
This sort of reminds me of the infamous McDonald's lawsuit for coffee that was too hot -- people immediately constructed a false set of beliefs about the lawsuit (admittedly aided by McDonald's) when the realities of the case were much more sympathetic to the victim.
Oh... well that explains why Harry Mack said his recent Omegle Bars #100 was the last one he was ever going to do, lol. He must have somehow known this was coming... unless it was publicly announced beforehand and I was not aware of that?
End of an era (of occasionally being surprise exposed to random penises while trying to chat with strangers). :P
Well damn, this sucks.
I mean, I've never used it myself but I have watched a lot of content from creators that use it. Such as the amazing pianist Frank Tedesco.
Losing Omegle is a bit sad, I had fun with asking people questions in that "view two people discuss your question" option.
However, the explanation for its closure and the post itself is even sadder. This paragraph particularly stuck with me:
This just resonates because it reflects a good portion of interactions and attitudes I see nowadays. I think the world has gotten a bit more cruel and cynical in recent years, both online and off. It seems the owner just couldn't take the stress of defending himself and Omegle repeatedly against outright hostile attacks on top of all the other responsibilities that come with operating Omegle and trying to ensure it's as safe as possible.
As someone who values empathy above all else, it's been frustrating to see people just look at only the absolute worst in each other and hurl insult and threats so easily. Feels like you need a thick skin to do almost anything on a public level these days, whether it be creating websites or simply posting drawings. Just makes me sad.
I don't want this to veer into a capitalistic rant, but it's a shame there's so much anger in the world and we hurl it at each other, each of which is powerless to change the world at large. If we could focus it on the right authorities we could see change surprisingly quickly, but it can be hard to think on a grander scale than what's in front of your eyes.
I'm only surprised it took that long. 99.9% of it was scammers, prostitution, and people saying slurs/waving dicks, and then disconnecting. A cesspool, regardless of all these advanced AI and other mentioned moderation methods.
There is only so much consolation and hope one can take from this 0.1%. It was clearly overwhelming and it reached its logical conclusion.
I used to use Chatroulette and Omegle back in college when they were first launched and it was such a heyday of activity and experimentation that it was worth sifting through the dicks to find real, genuine connections as well.
I can’t imagine any platform today that can offer such immediate, real, and global connection.
People found a way to eventually spoof camera feeds with recordings. People found a way to workaround geofencing with VPNs. It’s not hard to imagine people will soon spoof genuine human interactions with ChatGPT.
What I miss most was the nearly assured fact that another human was at “the other end of the pipe”, so to speak. The wait-time for a response could likely be because someone else was busy thinking up a fun quip…or because the early internet took ages to transmit information from thousands of miles away.
That's a damn shame. I spent a lot of time on Omegle during the long Melbourne lockdowns of 2020-21, and then an injury that kept me housebound for the better part of a year when most people were returning to social spaces. With Music and Jamming tags, playing for, with and played to by musicians around the world, Omegle played a non-trivial role in maintaining my mental health for two years of near-total isolation.
This is terribly sad. I absolutely loved Omegle, and I used it for hundreds, if not thousands of hours over the years. I began a great new friendship there just last week.
RIP. There are other random chat websites, but none as good as Omegle was. I will miss it.
Mr. Tired and I spent so much time on omegle being silly when we were dating. Some good stories came out of those sessions.
This is a crying shame. I've enjoyed using Omegle the few times I've tried it. Is there anything similar out there that replaces it?
~humanities.history seems like a weird pick for this. Can we move it to ~tech?
Yeah, agreed. Done.