BBC: The woman who successfully sued the website that matched her with a paedophile explains how she forced the site to close down. ‘Alice’, or A.M. as she was known in court says she feels "vindic…::“Alice” speaks exclusively to the BBC after her successful lawsuit against Omegle forced it offline.
I don’t get it. So someone let 11 yo kid use internet unmonitored and it’s the Internet’s fault? Isn’t it up to parents to know when their kid can go on the internet alone?
Spoken like a true non-parent and someone who forgot about everything they got away with as a youth.
I didn’t have internet until I was able to take responsibility for what I do with it. Not because my parents were so smart but because it simply wasn’t available where I lived. The only thing that affected me negatively for life was religion and I totally believe my parents are responsible, not the bible.
I think I should be able to sue the direct connect pedophile site.
And if pedophile facetimes your kid you’re going to sue Apple?
Might as well sue the ISP as well. Who else can parents blame for their lack of competence and awareness in what their children are doing in an environment where they can communicate, apparently in an unfiltered manner, with adults ?
It’s really funny. Companies have made all sorts of lockdown programs and monitoring software anyone can purchase for any operating system and then there’s parents blaming other entities for the fact that they have decided not to use those programs.
We chose not to have kids, but still we are apparently saddled with raising the kids other people chose to have. It’s like having a toddler and no door, then your toddler walks into traffic, dies, and you blame the city for killing your toddler. That’s UK law for you.
The guy in the article had the child send him 220 pictures right under a mother and father’s nose before he was caught. A child who, by the way, was 11, barely a teen. Holy terrible parenting, batman. These people should lose custody immediately.
Sue the computer screen manufacturer! They literally displayed the images!
I feel this is a big win for her, she obviously suffered a horrible trauma and this website was what facilitated that.
I don’t know how this is a win for the internet. This was a website that clearly said “we connect random strangers”, and they did, and a fucked up thing happened as an improbable event based on human nature. It doesn’t seem to be caused by some fundamental aspect of the way the website works. I don’t really know how this could have been avoided. How would the website know who is a pedophile? How would the website know who is a child? I can’t think of a way without fundamentally changing user identity on the internet. I’m not sure what this means for anonymous internet interactions.
It means what it has meant since the first fifty seconds someone used chat roulette or uno on Xbox
Random unmoderated sites like this are horrifying and a danger to both people and society.
There are arguments to be made about moderation in general. But this is not a high capacity rifle with questionable purpose. This is a pistol where the barrel is pointed backwards
I can see your argument that you shouldn’t meet strangers in a private place. I mean in real life you would go to a public space if you wanted to meet new people rather than invite strangers into your living room. That wouldn’t be safe and people who facilitate that would be pretty irresponsible. That’s basically what omegle was doing.
I might be coming around. I think this will have to be very carefully managed to avoid slipping too far. There are already conservatives pushing for mandatory government ID check for viewing adult material online. I could easily see that same narrative pushed here. I think there is a real danger to the kind of censorship that is created when anonymity is removed by mandate from the internet.
This reminds me of Greyhound getting sued after a murder on their bus.
I don’t like the implications of either. All responsibility for a crime should lie with the criminal, not the operator of the venue in which it occurred. In the case of Greyhound, it resulted in them frisking people boarding busses and banning pocket knives. In the case of Omegle, the site shut down. Both times, I think the world got a little bit worse.
I miss when Omegle was just text based. I made a friend from Czechia on there back in 2011.
Opening up video chats was asking for this to happen.
In retrospective, it feels unreal that the site made it this far into 2023
ChatRoulette is still around, which is nuts. That place was a cesspit 10 years ago, can’t imagine now.
Hello from Czechia.
As much as omegle was a cesspit, there are already even sketchier alternatives up and running. This will be a wild goose chase with no end in sight unless sites like this get rid of all privacy and log every single interaction and step up their moderation.
Like piracy sites and other illegal/grey areas, take one source down and two more will appear, or however the saying goes.
These sites are the glory holes of the internet.
Next year the city park will be forced to close down after the council was sued for by a woman who was allowed to meet a paedophile in it as a child.
Children need to be taught how to not get abused by strangers offline and online. If they aren’t, it’s not the fault of the place that allowed them to meet. When I was a child I was using the internet to talk to adults and had a great time. (The adults who had to deal with my crappy attitude before I learnt some netiquette probably had a less great time…)
Taught not to get abused? I think you mean “stranger danger” shit, which is taught but the way you phrased that is disturbing. It’s not a child’s job to “not get abused by ‘anyone’”. And all places in general should probably keep an eye on who comes in and out, except for niche/specialized services like vpns, warez, etc. That’s just called being responsible.
Parks and other ‘loose’ non-stores though shouldn’t be held responsible, I agree.
I just wanted a phrase which encompassed “don’t go home with strangers” and “don’t send strangers photos of yourself” and all other things which either are, or lead to, abuse.
A very large percentage of child abuse, kidnapping and pedo issues involve the child’s own family. “Stranger Danger” isn’t the solution.
In the very specific set of examples in the above posts, it’s basically only “Stranger Danger”. It’s literally about Omegle.
But I do very much agree with your point when talking in a wider context
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That doesn’t have any bearing on a comparison between two different types of “stranger danger”.
You kinda sound like the bad guy in monsters inc
It’s been a long time since I watched it so you’ll have to enlighten me.
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You forget that children can be easily manipulated as their brains are literally not capable of proper judgement in most situations
Mm, I guess that’s why the park needs to be shut/we can never let children go there unattended.
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You haven’t said why it matters it was privately run.
It matters that it had private rooms, but there tend to be private areas in public spaces like parks too. The analogy actually works much better if the kid’s computer is in a public place and they don’t have unrestricted access to the internet through a phone - obviously in either case it’s harder to abuse someone in secret if you have to take the initial risk of meeting somewhere you could be spotted, and only then move it private.
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He did take action to stop it - he aided in multiple prosecutions. What he didn’t do was turn the site into something completely different, with mandatory registration.
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FWIW, LWD’s ability to click “reply” outran his ability fill those replies with meaningful words, and instead of admitting they can’t back up their opinion they’re resorting to insults and insinuation.
That’s a deeply creepy take
Don’t blame the pedophiles, blame the children!
You can still blame the pedophiles while also teaching kids safe internet etiquette so that they don’t fall prey to one.
Teaching somebody how to avoid being a victim in addition to punishing offenders is a good take
Uh, since when is it the children’s fault if they aren’t taught something? I’m blaming the parents!
There are days like these where I’m glad it’s not morons like you who run things because the world would genuinely be an even shittier place with takes like these. Mental gymnastics to blaming children for being abused.
Children need to be taught
That does not place the blame on the children.
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Why does Omegle being privately owned matter? Does a city council have less responsibility than a private business to prevent harm? Do your parks have security patrolling them? I’ve never seen that. Was Omegle “full” of perverts, or were there are a handful in comparison to the many ordinary users, but our attention naturally focuses on the aberrant cases?
“club” implies membership, which Omegle didn’t have, which is the whole issue, and why I went with a park which anyone can enter without registering, not a club.
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Hmm yes, making sure that parents (or someone else) knows what children are doing online is a good idea…
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You drew a distinction between a park and children doing stuff online (on certain websites) by saying that in a park, everyone can see everyone else (which is not true - there are usually secluded spots in parks). This is no distinction at all if a child’s parents knows what they are doing online.
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I really don’t understand how you can “force” anyone to do anything over Omegle but I guess that’s neither here nor there. The more important point is that it would have been better to take the opportunity to catch more pedos doing the same thing on this site. They’re still out there just moved to different platforms now. It’s not really the win she thinks it is. There’s HIGHLY questionable/NSFL stuff even on TikTok and Google Photos.
Poor Peter File. Dude gets a bad wrap.
Hey Peter! 👨🦽
Wow! I haven’t heard of omegle since I left memebase in 2013.
Omegle got shut down?
Myeah.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
“I feel personal pride that no more children will be added to Omegle’s body count,” says the woman who successfully forced the infamous chat site to shut down.
Speaking for the first time since the platform was taken offline, “Alice” or “A.M.” as she’s known in court documents, tells the BBC she demanded the website’s closure as part of an out-of-court settlement.
Omegle’s popularity rose during the pandemic lockdowns in 2020, and was the subject of a BBC investigation which revealed that prepubescent boys were found to be explicitly touching themselves in front of strangers.
On Friday, a week after Leif Brooks closed his chat service with a lengthy statement, he added a sentence at the bottom: “I thank A.M. for opening my eyes to the human cost of Omegle.”
Cyber Correspondent Joe Tidy speaks exclusively with child abuse survivor “Alice” and her legal team, as they prepare a case that could have major consequences for social media companies.
Alice’s case is a legal landmark, as most social media lawsuits in the US are dismissed under a catch-all protection law called Section 230, which exempts companies from being sued for things that users do on their platforms.
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