Omegle is going dark, with its founder Leif K-Brooks admitting it was used to “commit unspeakably heinous crimes.”
Brooks founded Omegle in 2009, setting it up as a service that connected two people at random for text and video chats. The site was the genesis for lots of memes and lots of YouTube videos (there are thousands upon thousands of “I matched with strangers on Omegle and X happened” uploads), but it was also rife with child sexual abuse. Earlier this year, BBC News reported that the site has been mentioned in more than 50 legal cases from countries including the U.S., U.K., and Australia in just the last two years.
Recently, Omegle settled a $22 million lawsuit from a woman who said the site matched her with a child predator when she was 11 years old. That man convinced her to send him photos and videos of herself, and is now convicted of abusing her and other children.
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Omegle sought to have the case dismissed, claiming the Communications Decency Act prevented it from being responsible for crimes committed on its platform. The judge denied its request, and said Omegle’s design specifically connected minors with adults, making it culpable.
For the vast majority of its lifetime, Omegle had no age verification system in place; when it did add verification in 2022, the system was just a checkbox that asked users to confirm they were over 18. Because Omegle was anonymous and there were no accounts/user logins, there was no way to consistently track the same people across the site and tell if they were actually 18.
In a statement about his decision to close Omegle, Brooks (who was 18 when he launched it) said, “There can be no honest accounting of Omegle without acknowledging that some people misused it, including to commit unspeakably heinous crimes. From the bottom of my heart, thank you to everyone who used Omegle for positive purposes, and to everyone who contributed to the site’s success in any way. I’m so sorry I couldn’t keep fighting for you.”
He added, “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. Operating Omegle is no longer sustainable, financially nor psychologically. Frankly, I don’t want to have a heart attack in my 30s.”
Brooks closed the statement by urging readers to donate to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit digital rights group.
