It was announced today the website Omegle has closed. The owner of the cam-to-cam site, Leif Brooks, published a Public Statement regarding the colosure of the site.
I have been trying to get Omegle closed down for years and anyone who knows the work I do will know precisely how much harm I have witnessed as a result of the use of Omegle. Mr Brooks' rant regarding the sites closure expresses in clear terms his belief that the world is worse off for its closure. He outlines the forced closure of the site has diminished freedoms and society will be harmed and worsened by its demise.
I wish to add a rebuff to Mr Brooks statement.
"If the Internet is a manifestation of the “global village”, Omegle was meant to be a way of strolling down a street in that village, striking up conversations with the people you ran into along the way."
I do agree with this analogy. Many teens I have spoken to share with me the pleasure they have in interacting safely with strangers or 'randoms' from across the globe. Similar to 'pen-pals' of the 60s & 70s, such interaction offers knowledge and experience of different cultures and provides a great way to build online friendships. However, those same children also discuss with me the very grave concern they had for all the deviates using the site. By 2022, Omegle had more users wanting to interact in a sexually aggressive manner than they did genuine conversational users.
"I believe in a responsibility to be a “good Samaritan”, and to implement reasonable measures to fight crime and other misuse. That is exactly what Omegle did. In addition to the basic safety feature of anonymity, there was a great deal of moderation behind the scenes, including state-of-the-art AI operating in concert with a wonderful team of human moderators. Omegle punched above its weight in content moderation, and I’m proud of what we accomplished."
Omegles "reasonable measures to fight crime and misuse" failed monumentally! Such measures were reactive in nature and in most instances pushed responsibility for protection to the user. Such measures included telling visitors they "use Omegle at their own peril.", "Omegle does not owe you any duty to protect you from the acts of other users." and "Predators have been known to use Omegle, so please be careful."
The AI was also reactive in nature and failed to act on harm as it occurred in real time. Sexual predators were able to enter the site with impunity, commit their crimes and exit without detection or intervention as it was occurring. Moderation was sporadic at best and over the past 12 years I have been conducting investigations on Omegle, I failed to identify any evidence of real time moderation.
"In addition to the basic safety feature of anonymity, there was a great deal of moderation behind the scenes, including state-of-the-art AI operating in concert with a wonderful team of human moderators. Omegle punched above its weight in content moderation, and I’m proud of what we accomplished."
This is a deliberately misleading and deceptive statement. The comments, "a great deal of moderation" and "a wonderful team of human moderators" would lead any reasonable person to believe there was a large number of moderators working across the Omegle network to detect and protect.
Omegle had four moderators! Yep; not 40, not 400; four!
In 2022, Omegle had 3.3 million active users per day. That is 137 thousand users per hour.
Based on my statistics further below in this article;
• this means at least 1.8 million adult males visiting the site per day to engaged sexually with a child.
• this means at least 132 thousand adult males were visiting the site per day to groom a child into meeting them in the real world.
• this means at least 1.05 million children were visiting the site per day being exposed to serious predatory and criminal behaviour.
Four moderators working to protect millions of children and deter equally as many predators? Yeah, Mr Brooks must be very proud of this dedication to user protection.
To that point; within 12 months of Omegle facing a Legal Challenge as to Omegle's safety and user protection, the site is closed. Mr Brooks spits the dummy and blames the do-gooders for destroying his dream of bringing the world together! His deceptive heroism is clearly overshadowed by his constant failures to act on the safety of his network. If such concern was genuine, Omegle would still be active today and we would not be having this conversation.
The above legal case outlines how an 11 year old girl was groomed on his site by a predator. A meeting was arranged, and she was abused for years. She was then coerced to return to Omegle in order to 'recruit' more young girls to suffer the same abuse. Where was her protection? Where was the detection and moderation so proudly asserted by Mr Brooks? This did not go on for hours or days, it was years!
Only a small percentage of children report sexual abuse. As such, what is of more concern to me is the potential number of children who have been sexually abused after meeting someone on Omegle. I would expect the real damage created by Omegle and their lack of user protection will not be truly known for some time or may never be known.
"Omegle worked with law enforcement agencies, and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, to help put evildoers in prison where they belong. 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."
This is a deliberate misrepresentation. Omegle only worked with law enforcement when they were compelled by warrant to do so. Even then, they only supplied a finite amount of data which could be effectively used by law enforcement. This inference, that Mr Brooks and his team were actively patrolling their network, capturing online predators and then running to the nearest police station with evidentiary content is grossly false and such an assertion is cowardly in the extreme.
When I was still a serving police officer working with technology crime, a 36 year old male from Sydney jumped on a plane and came to meet a 12 year old girl at the Garden City Library. He met that girl on Omegle. When he was arrested, we identified he had also arranged to meet four other children in Australia he had groomed on Omegle.
When I contacted Omegle for evidence to identify the offender, they demanded a warrant be issued. After doing so, all I got back from Omegle was an IP address. No logs, no video capture, no identifiable information was provided to assist in the detection or conviction of the offender from an Omegle perspective. When I responded to Omegle with my frustration at the lack of content the site was capturing and how poorly they are assisting in capturing online offenders, my email address was blocked!
"In recent years, it seems like the whole world has become more ornery. 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 quote is typical of the type of narcissistic personality held by many creators of Big Tech environments. Perhaps the world has become more ornery or difficult to deal with because they have had enough?"
Omegle was born in 2009, and for over a decade Mr Brooks failed to adequately act on the harms being experienced on his network. Law enforcement, child advocacy networks, cyber safety educators and campainers constantly requested Omegle work harder on protecting its users with little to no response. Instead of taking on that challenge, he closes the site and then blames society for that end.
In the time Omegle purported to have been working their hardest to combat harm on the site, I have seen an 1100% increase in the number of Australian children being groomed by online predators or others looking to sexually exploit children on the network. In the past 8 years I have conducted in excess of 300 hours of experiments on the site where I have gathered significant evidence of online harms and high level criminality. Most recently, in an experiment conducted with Todd Sampson on his acclaimed documentary Mirror Mirror, our nation was shown first hand how dangerous the site had become and how poorly it was being moderated.
In a recent document I submitted to the Australian Government in response to the Royal Commission into online child exploitation, I quantified exactly how prevalent criminal behaviour was on Omegle;
55% of Adult Male users, engaged sexually with a child on the network.
23% of Adult Male users exposed their genitalia immediately the camera was activated.
45% of Adult Male users, coerced a child to engage in a sexual act.
4% of Adult Male users, initiated conversation with a child to arrange a meeting.
9% of Omegle users were children under the age of 13.
32% of Omegle users were children under the age of 18.
59% of Omegle users were adults.
My constant "attack" of Omegle was for one reason and one reason alone. They were not doing enough to protect their users and failing dismally in acting on the massive number of sexual offenders on their network. This so called "subset of users" were attracted to Omegle because of it's anonymity and invited in without scrutiny or concern. Children were lured onto the site and openly exposed to the most brutal of content and interaction and the flawed design of the site played a significant part in those children being damaged and harmed.
"However, the recent attacks have felt anything but constructive. The only way to please these people is to stop offering the service."
Nope! That is a cop-out. An uncaring response to an issue Leif Brooks has tried to avoid as long as he could. It was his choice to close Omegle because of his lack of morals and integrity. Instead of closing the site, Omegle could have done all or any of the following;
Employed real time video capture of offending users with automated reporting.
Used real time AI monitoring to detect pre-teens on Omegle, with a 'dump and block' response to stop them returning.
Had moderators actively patrolling the network in real time who captured full chat history.
Placed a disclaimer on the site that users may have content captured which will be supplied to law enforcement.
Introduced a registration or joining system.
Removed pornography site advertising and sponsorship.
Removed the tag line "Talk to Strangers".
"When they say Omegle shouldn’t exist, they are really saying that you shouldn’t be allowed to use it; that you shouldn’t be allowed to meet random new people online."
This statement may well have readers believing Mr Brooks is a 15 year old kid, when he is actually a 34 year old adult! It truly reflects his imbecilic attitude toward the need for ethical design and how stubborn he was in pushing against people challenging the design of his site. The same analogy would be to build a car in 2023 without seatbelts, airbags, brakes and headlights and try to get it approved. After it will be obviously knocked back by regulators, the car is then scrapped with the designer stating, "the government is not allowing the people to drive cars!"
Omegle's design suited sexual predators and it never changed in the 14 years it was in existence. In fact, it was a well known and highly recommended site among adult child abuse networks. Its T's & C's pushed the responsibility of protection to users and devolved the blame for sexual abuse to victims. When challenged, Mr Brooks would run and hide instead of acting morally to better protect those users who were using the site for which it was intended.
Chatting with randoms is a very strong component of the internet, especially social media and gaming. 78% of Australian children are doing it. Done with the right level of caution, safety and awareness, it can be an awesome way to meet people and gain cultural experience. In my education I accept it as the norm, so I offer advice and experiences as to how to interact safely with strangers.
Over the 14 years Omegle existed, online harm against children increased massively. The design of the site failed to respond adequately to that increase and did not evolve toward a global demand for a safety by design principal. These failings ultimately resulted in Leif Brooks closing the site. To blame those advocating against online child exploitation for its closure perfectly reflects Mr Brooks attitude and why I have been challenging sites like Omegle for many years.
"Consider the idea that society ought to force women to dress modestly in order to prevent rape. One counter-argument is that rapists don’t really target women based on their clothing; but a more powerful counter-argument is that, irrespective of what rapists do, women’s rights should remain intact. If society robs women of their rights to bodily autonomy and self-expression based on the actions of rapists – even if it does so with the best intentions in the world – then society is practically doing the work of rapists for them."
This statement is utterly dellusional and highly offensive. Mr Brooks, you are a pathetic human being!
Society is not forcing children to stop talking to strangers! Advocates such as I are simply asking them to do it safely, whilst demanding the creators of online environments to ensure such interactions are done so with the appropriate level of security and protection. Omegle failed to do this for 14 years.
It is a proven fact, Omegle paired children with serious sexual offenders. The utter lack of accountability and effective response to predatory behaviour by Omegle contributed significantly to the exposure of juvenile users to harm.
Omegle opened the door to "rapists"! They admitted on the opening page of their site they were aware predators were using Omegle, yet they still invited them in. They still encouraged children to the site to "talk with strangers", therefore directly exposing them to those predators. So from my perspective, I know darn well exactly the person who was "practically doing the work of rapists for them."