Omegle shuts down after 14 years: Creepy website which allowed users to video chat random strangers closes amid claims it paired children with padeophiles
- Free online chat site Omegle was touted as a ‘great way to meet new friends’
- But it is facing lawsuits for repeatedly pairing children with sexual predators
Online chat website Omegle has shut down after repeated claims that it has faciliated child abuse.
The site, which randomly paired people with strangers and became particularly popular among children during Covid lockdowns, had around 73 million visitors a month as of this year.
Omegle was touted by its creator as a ‘great way to meet new friends’, but it’s long been under fire for failing to protect minors by pairing them with paedophiles.
The site has been mentioned in more than 50 cases against paedophiles in countries including the UK, US and Australia, according to the BBC.
It’s currently facing one landmark lawsuit brought forward by an American woman who was abused by a Canadian man over a period of three years.
‘Talk to strangers’: Omegle randomly paired users in one-on-one chat sessions where they would chat anonymously using the names ‘you’ and ‘stranger’
What is Omegle?
Launched in the US in 2009 by 18-year-old protégée Leif K-brooks, the site attracted millions of users across the globe per week.
The free website let users chat with random strangers via text or through video from around the world.
Many have criticised the platform for its potential to put young people at risk where they could be exposed to nudity or abuse.
Leif K-Brooks, who founded Omegle at the age of 18 back in 2009, explained the decision to close the site in a blog post, which included an image of the site’s logo on a gravestone.
The ‘elusive’ 32-year-old, who declines all interviews and has been widely slammed for failing to protect children, cited the ‘stress’ of running the site and lawsuits against it.
‘As much as I wish circumstances were different, the stress and expense of this fight – coupled with the existing stress and expense of operating Omegle, and fighting its misuse – are simply too much,’ Mr Brooks said.
‘Operating Omegle is no longer sustainable, financially nor psychologically.
‘Frankly, I don’t want to have a heart attack in my 30s.’
In a world where lengthy set-up procedures online have been commonplace, using Omegle was relatively easy.
All people had to do was head to omegle.com on their phone or computer and click ‘start a chat’ or ‘video’ to be paired with a stranger.
Omegle announced the decision in a blog post which included an image of its logo on a gravestone (pictured)
Leif K-Brooks, who founded Omegle at the age of 18 back in 2009, explained the decision in a blog post , which included an image of its logo on a gravestone.
READ MORE Jailed police officer exposed himself to children on Omegle
Omegle has been widely criticized for failing to protect children
Each user would chat anonymously with the names ‘you’ and ‘stranger’, although there was nothing stopping them from exchanging names and other personal details.
Users of the site were warned that they should be 18 or over, but this didn’t stop children below this age going on to the site.
People were told they were ‘solely responsible for their behaviour while using Omegle’, while another warning even said ‘predators have been known to use Omegle so please be careful’.
Omegle is now fighting a huge lawsuit brought forward by an American woman ‘Alice’ who, around a decade ago, was paired with Canadian paedophile Ryan Fordyce when she was 11.
During their first video chat Fordyce persuaded her to share personal messaging details which allowed him to control and coerce Alice into sending intimate images over three years.
For a documentary aired in February, the woman told the BBC that there’s ‘a community of predators and pedophiles that thrive off of Omegle’.
‘They use it as a way to access children repetitively and consistently,’ she said.
In the documentary – ‘Omegle: Matched with My Abuser’ – the BBC’s cyber correspondent Joe Tidy is also seen tracking down the Omegle founder and being refused an interview outside his Florida home.
Tiday then knocks on Mr Brooks’ front door and shouts: ‘We want to know why you’re not protecting children.’
In his new blog post, Mr Brooks doesn’t mention such accusations directed towards him but laments the loss of the entire website because of the actions of abusers.
‘If something as simple as meeting random new people is forbidden, what’s next?’ he said.
‘A physical-world analogy might be shutting down Central Park because crime occurs there – or perhaps more provocatively, destroying the universe because it contains evil.’
Mr Brooks also insisted there ‘was a great deal of moderation’ behind the scenes at Omegle, including AI and a team of human moderators.
‘Omegle punched above its weight in content moderation, and I’m proud of what we accomplished,’ he said.
‘There are ‘people’ rotting behind bars right now thanks in part to evidence that Omegle proactively collected against them, and tipped the authorities off to.’
Leif K Brooks: The US programmer who founded Omegle at the age of 18
Leif K Brooks founded Omegle in 2009 when he was just 18 years old and still a senior in high school. He remains the owner.
In a blog post announcing the launch of the website, he said it was ‘wonderful and a little bemusing to see Omegle gaining such huge popularity’.
Already an adept computer programmer, Mr Brooks had been writing programs for ‘many years’ before launching Omegle but said the chat service was the first one ‘to go viral’ with 1,800 users.
Initially it was a text-only chat that paired users at random to communicate as ‘strangers’ and in 2010 was updated to include a video chat service.
Mr Brooks attended the University of Vermont but dropped out. Unlike other tech wunderkinds, he keeps a low profile and refuses interviews.
In 2016, Brooks co-founded Octane AI, which ‘powers millions of automated conversations for big name brands and celebrities. The company landed Brooks on the Forbes 30 Under 30 tech list in 2018.
Omegle had 73 million visitors a month as of February 2023, according to the BBC, but has been facing accusations of failing to protect children.
In November 2023, Mr Brooks announced the immediate closure of Omegle, citing the ‘stress and expense’ of operating the platform.
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