2023-11-10 21:13:03
Sexual violence file The famous site has no longer been available since Wednesday November 8, which suffered from yet another scandal linked to a child abuse case, resolved at the end of a negotiation conditioned by the closure of the site.
“Talk with strangers.” This was the promise of the American site Omegle, founded in 2009 by Leif K-Brooks, just 18 years old at the time. The page, which made it possible to chat in video or in writing with Internet users from all over the world in just a few clicks, closed its doors on November 8 after fourteen years of service. Instead of its usual page, omegle.com displays a text with a sober, not to say ugly, aesthetic, in the spirit of a site created in 2009. The creator addresses his users at length and returns to the genesis of the chat: “Since I discovered the Internet at a very young age, it was a magical place for me. After growing up in a small town, isolated from the big world, it was a revelation to see how much there was left to discover, how many interesting people and ideas the world had to offer.”
An idyllic picture, far from the excesses experienced by the site over the years. According to BBC, Omegle is reportedly linked to around fifty child abuse cases in recent years. With so many scandals – when the device for “talking to strangers” ended up linking children and people with bad intentions – yet another affair took down the site. The permanent closure of Omegle was reportedly part of the agreement negotiated between the platform and a victim. The complainant, aged 11 at the time of the facts, declared having met a man in his thirties who had forced her to take naked photos and videos of herself over a period of three years, according to Vogue.
Leif K-Brooks does not deny the dangers of his site, “there can be no honest review of Omegle without recognizing that some people have misused it, including committing atrocious and unspeakable crimes.” The various attacks will also have got the better of him. “Running Omegle is no longer possible, financially or psychologically,” concludes the creator.
The excesses of Omegle, a well-known internet phenomenon
Because it is not the simple message “You must be over 13 years old and the consent of a parent if you are between 13 and 18 years old” which made it possible to secure the chat. However, in 2020, the page is regaining popularity with Covid, which allows you to “meet” new people despite confinement. At this time, the site displays 52 million monthly visits, including 1 million in France alone, according to Koolmag.
On the Internet, Omegle’s bad reputation is well known. Serge, 26, remembers spending time on the site when he was younger, when “[il] was having fun with a friend. He has few memories of the chat. Except: “I often saw people jerking off,” he tells Libé. On YouTube, Internet users publish videos with several million views where they “trap perverts”. Old disgusting people talk there with young people who claim to be 12 or 13 years old, and multiply the questions or indecent requests.
On TikTok too, a trend consists of sharing funny, bizarre or shocking encounters experienced on the platform. Koolmag specifically looked into the subject, and discovered, among other things, that men masturbating or pornographic content could appear after just thirty seconds of browsing.
Leif K-Brooks is, however, no stranger to the problem. In the message now posted on Omegle, he explains: “Having been a victim of rape myself as a child, I was well aware of the risk that every time I interacted with a person in the real world, it was my real body that was in danger. The Internet protected me from that thought.”
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