The stranger is dead: Omegle shuts down
This past week, the windowless white van of the internet, Omegle, has finally been shut down. It wasn’t shut down because its owner realized it was a haven for online predators. I’m pretty sure the owner was well aware of that. It’s been voluntarily shut down after the owner, Leif K-Brooks, lost a multi-million dollar lawsuit to a victim who was preyed upon through Omegle.
For those of you who may be unfamiliar with Omegle, it was a chat site that would pair users together randomly. Chats could be done over video or through text. Their motto was “Talk to strangers.” There were no user accounts to sign up for.
There was also no kind of any age verification to speak of. When it first started, the only thing remotely close to age verification was a brief blurb that said the site was for people over the age of 18, or 13 if you have an adult’s permission. Of course, this stopped absolutely no one, so children were drawn to this dangerous website that their parents had no idea even existed. And where children congregate online, predators are sure to follow, and Omegle was no exception.
For example, the victim who sued Omegle was 11-years-old in 2014 when Omegle connected her with a predator who was in his thirties. From there, the conversations moved to the instant messaging app Kik, which is another tool used by sex offenders, pedophiles, child porn collectors, and child traffickers. For the next three years, the predator coerced the girl into sending explicit images of herself. The predator threatened her with making the pictures public if she didn’t comply, and even asked her to recruit other girls for him. He was arrested in 2018.
In response to the lawsuit, Omegle did what most miscreants would do in their situation, they engaged in victim blaming. They claimed that since the victim provided her contact information to the predator, Omegle wasn’t responsible for any damages. Again, this was an 11-year-old girl we’re talking about.
In his farewell message posted on Omegle, Leif K-Brooks paints himself as some kind of free speech absolutist and protector of anonymity. But much like other free speech absolutists like Elon Musk with Twitter and Jim Larkin and Mike Lacey with Backpage, K-Brooks was willing to tolerate a bunch of deviants so he could cash in. He goes on to call Omegle’s detractors tyrannical and that Omegle’s users were the true victims.
He also pats himself on the back for working with law enforcement and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC). But you can’t claim to be the solution to a problem you helped create. I used to call this the craigslist conundrum and the Backpage Paradox. I guess now I can call it Omegle’s Razor.
K-Brooks then goes on to further inflate his own ego by comparing Omegle to Central Park in New York City. He posits that you wouldn’t ask to shut down Central Park just because crime happens there, yet Omegle is. Besides being an apples to oranges comparison, at least Central Park is patrolled by police. He says Omegle was moderated, yet he was the only employee of Omegle by his own admission. That would mean that any moderation would be done voluntarily by moderators, and the phrase ‘voluntary Omegle moderator’ does not fill me with a sense of security. “Hey, I’m not going to pay you, but you can eavesdrop on any chat you want.” is what it sounds like to me.
But before we leave Leif K-Brooks to wallow in his own self-pity, let’s have one last reminder of the kind of lowlife that used Omegle.
(Content Warning: Self-Harm)
Before the news broke about Omegle shutting down, I was getting ready to make a post about 52-year-old William Scott Elam of Middletown, Ohio. He was arrested by federal agents back in October for allegedly using Omegle and Discord to coerce his underage victims into producing explicit material for him.
Elam is said to have posed as a 14-year-old boy online, and told at least one victim that he would cut himself if they didn’t comply with his demands. Which must have been some kind of sick fetish for Elam because he’s also accused of ordering one of his victims to cut herself on camera for him.
That’s a new one to me. In the 23 years I’ve been writing about crime, I’ve never hard about a predator making a victim cut themselves. However, this is not surprising coming from Omegle.
(Content Warning Over)
In the rest of his farewell address, K-Brooks tries to make himself out to be some kind of martyr. To that I can only say, get off the cross, we need the wood. You made a website that victimized children for 14 years while you made bank. You’re not a saint, you’re not a martyr, and you’re certainly not a victim. You’re an opportunist of the worst kind, and I’m personally tickled pink that Omegle has finally been put in the ground.
Now, the question is, will another website take its place? There will be other platforms that will try to rise out of the ooze to become the next Omegle, but I doubt any of them will be as ‘successful’. When Backpage was shuttered, a multitude of websites rose from that trash fire, claiming to be the next Backpage. Yet, none of them have made it to the point where they can say they’re the new Backpage. So, in my opinion, there will be no ‘new’ Omegle, and the predators who used Omegle will be scattered to the four winds of the internet searching for a new haunt.
Or, they’ll all just turn up on Kik.
Goodbye, Omegle. Your demise was long overdue.
(Sources)
- Video chat site Omegle shuts down after 14 years — and an abuse victim’s lawsuit
- Feds: Middletown man arrested for allegedly coercing, exploiting children online
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