I don't intend to victim blame or defend any abusers here; this shit is vile and should not be tolerated, period.
From the below, it sounds like it was determined that, despite Omegle's moderation efforts, Omegle could have done better in areas relating to age verification and matchmaking. So I'm not trying to defend or minimize Omegle's role either, I don't know the details of how the site worked but it sounds like this was a problem for a long time:
the judge in A.M.’s case found last July that Omegle’s design was at fault and it was not protected by Section 230: It could have worked to prevent matches between minors and adults before sexual content was even sent, the judge said.
However, I really don't like the choice of phrasing "forced", and I wonder whether that's poor paraphrasing or actually taken from the lawsuit.
Her lawsuit, filed in 2021, alleged that she met a man in his thirties on Omegle who forced her to take naked photos and videos over a three-year period. She was just 11 when it began in 2014.
Again, to be clear, not trying to say that the victim should, or even could, have done anything differently. Victim blaming is bad. But how the hell are they saying "forced" to do something by some scumbag over the internet? What kind of conditions does a kid have to be in at home to feel like they can't turn to their parent/guardian for help in a terrifying situation like that? How is an 11-year-old in 2014 being allowed to get into that situation in the first place, between her parents and her school?
It seems like this victim was failed by every support system she should have been able to rely on. This is so messed up. This is exactly why we need things like sex education and Internet safety education.
This is a failure of parenting. WTF is an 11 year old doing on Omegle?
It just isn’t that simple. I’ve got four kids. At least one of them ended up watching a naked man on Omegle once. And I say this because they were in a group of friends and dared each other on, on a school trip, and they were discovered (one of them felt pretty shocked and told a teacher) and we had a big discussion with her.
Kids do dumb shit all the time. Omegle is (was) very much known about amongst them all.
So, even with careful parenting and a locked down internet, and policies not to have phones upstairs in your room, kids do dumb shit or find a new service that isn’t in your filter, because they’ve heard about it through their friends. I know because my wife and I carefully raise four kids and the internet is a fucking onslaught to a dopamine dependent, approval seeking teenager.
I’m not saying “it’s all Omegle’s fault”. Everyone had a role to play. But let’s not pretend Omegle was blameless.
You can parent your children all day long and everything is just fine at home. As soon as your kids are unleashed into the world of school, it's anything goes. Your child is immediately subjected to all the poor and awful parenting that is outside your control. The only thing you can do is give them skills to navigate those situations. Sounds like @sunbeam60@lemmy.one did just that. Bravo.
It's almost like we should focus on educating them about how to responsibly use the Internet instead of trying to censor their access to it (which as you pointed out, basically never works).
Does anyone actually think shutting down one specific website will make a meaningful difference? Like... really? Did shutting down Napster stop piracy? Did shutting down Silk Road stop online drug sales?
But how the hell are they saying “forced” to do something by some scumbag over the internet?
There was a group from Brazil doing stuff like that and got publicized when they were arrested recently. Usually they'd coerce the minor into sending one picture, then use it as blackmail against them to give them more. They might even gaslight them to convince them that they'll get in big trouble if they tell anyone and it'll just get worse for them.
I've seen full fledged adults taken hard by scammers and willingly giving them thousands of dollars against their own interests, and they heavily distrust and resist anyone trying to help them. I can only imagine accomplishing that with a child that lacks long term thinking skills is even more effective.
Literally a black mirror episode
children are incredibly easy to influence. "if you don't do it I will find where you live and harm your family, and do not call the cops/tell your parents" is often enough threat.
The common thing I've seen in more well -knowncases was the abuser striking up a relationship and pretending to be somebody younger, getting compromising details/photos from the victim, then threatening to release those to family/friends unless the victim follows their wishes (which often providing further sexual images/acts).
Not sure if that might be the case with a service like Omegle, but it was essentially what happened in the Amanda Todd case and other similar cases.
what if the children play Roblox and are aware of the existence of pedos, they will be more careful right?
What kind of conditions does a kid have to be in at home to feel like they can't turn to their parent/guardian for help in a terrifying situation like that?
"parents should be doing blah blah blah....no, I don't have kids."
The best parents in the world still can't control what their kids are doing every second of every day. Kids will always find ways around every single thing that's meant to restrict what they can do, see, or hear. I'm sure you never did stuff you weren't supposed to when you were a kid...right?
Yeah, and we could shut down the Internet all together... or we could be realistic about prevention.
And yes, I accessed lots of 'sensitive' material online as a kid well before this website existed. So I find it hard to blame this specific website...websites come and go. I do however absolutely blame the creep himself since they are the one who did something wrong. Not the website.
Thank you for adding just another reason for the myriad of pre-existing ones that convinced me of never having kids.
I'll do it then, I am victim-blaming. An 11 year old broke the rules and logged onto a website that she shouldn't be on and then somehow a 30 year old guy forced her to take naked pictures. The problem wasn't the website, it's this child that broke the rules and doesn't know not to do things for strangers on the internet.
Dude, the victim is literally a child.
Hence why it's easy to understand that she made this mistake. Her parents might as well sue the ISP for enabling this communication to take place.
An 11 year old child should be expected to break rules and at times end up where they aren't supposed to be. 30 year old fucking predators shouldn't be taking advantage of that.
This is like shaming a 20 year old for dressing in a gogo skirt, raping her, and then saying "she was asking for it".
No. She wasn't the problem. Your depraved ass was.
Men are fucking pigs and I don't trust the lot of you.
Source: me. A man and a father.
Sure, but shutting down the website is like shutting down the club that the slutty 20 year old dressed up slutty for and went to on the night a creep raped her. Maybe she had a fake ID (if USA at least). And yeah, perhaps the club should be more careful about fake IDs. But the club didn't rape anyone, the rapist did. And shutting down club A for club B to replace it will do nothing to prevent future rapes.
No offense to the good people in Omegle but let's be real, that site like many other of these "anonymous chat" sites are rife with people like that dude. If a website can't better control the traffic then shut it down. A night club has a bouncer and to your point can check and ID and fake or not I highly doubt an 11 year old is getting in.
Shutting down the site is a small price to pay to protect youth doing what youth are made to do which is test limits.
Chat Roulette, the site Omegle copied the video format from, had a built in report option that would ban nude people.
So have you heard of emotional violence or exploitation? That's how that works over the internet. You don't need to be in the same room to be forced to do something if you're vulnerable.
OP addressed that already. OP is saying something akin to the following:
"A kid wanders at night alone and gets into a run down bar. She gets groped. The police shuts down the bar, everyone applauds. But what is a kid doing wandering around at night unsupervised?! Where are the parents?"
This is a bad analogy, a child can't wander into a shady bar, late at night, while at home, in their room, while doing what they can to hide their activities from their parents, in the way that they can going on an inappropriate website.
If they're going on inappropriate websites then that's their problem. I'm sure any good parent would teach their kid about actions having consequences...
I mean, realistically we all did, unless you grew up during time when there was no internet. My mother was concerned about it when she found out I had watched porn when I was 13, but nothing more. Funny thing is that my mother brough it up to my father and he was like yeah ok he's a teenager. Lmao. But here I am today, I find porn extremely boring and didn't watch it for over a decade, maybe I could have porn addiction if my parents decided to block internet over it instead.
The thing online that traumatizes me the most is the thought that people turn off kid's internet instead of teaching them how to deal with strangers properly, because believe it or not, outside world is a lot more scary than internet.
A 11 year old can know to stop replying if someone asks their home address online, same kid can get kidnapped and have it be beaten out of them in the real world.
Shield a kid from the horrors of the world, the you'll have a dumb adult in he future.
Teach your kids how to spot danger and how to handle all the world's bullshit, then you'll have a smart adult in the future.
Don't baby your kids please.
This does not get into the fine details of what happened. They could have had something going, deceitfully or not, that convinced them they had no other choice. Anyway, that wasn't the point I was making. I was pointing out that a child sneaking away to a shady bar in the middle of the night has much more serious implications of negligence than a kid going to an inappropriate website.
Bro. Analogies don't need to be 100% realistic.
How many analogies have you read involving fictional characters? Or saying stuff like "that's a catch-22"? Do you say "actually, that phrase comes from a work of fiction, so it's invalid"?
"It's like when Homer can't stop eating donuts" - "Oh but Homer doesn't exist. Checkmate!"
An ant carrying a leave is like a dude carrying three cars on his back. "Whoa! It's impossible for a dude to carry that much weight!"
Well, The shady bar thing has happened before. So it's not unrealistic and that wasn't my point anyway. It simply does not fit the situation provided in the way the poster is trying to use it. There are far, far, greater implications of negligence for a child sneaking away, to a shady bar, in the middle of the night, than there is with a kid going on an inappropriate website.
Or even the opposite analogy. A guy goes to a bar that has an ID requirement. Has a few drinks. Meets a girl. They end up having a conversation and she and he hook up.
A week later, the cops show and the guy is charged with a sex crime because the girl was under 18 even though:
By all appearances she was of a similar age to him and consenting
She was in a place where only adults would be expected to attend
The ID requirement of the establishment meant that she should have been well above 18
So what's the liability of the bar, both towards allowing underage patrons and allowing them to hook up with older individuals while potentially intoxicated? Could they be sued and/or shut down?
How does that story change if the bar was known to look the other way on underage patrons, or not properly check ID? How about if the girl in question was known by some of the staff? How about if the man knew that underage patrons were not uncommon.
Who has a case against the bar: the man; the girl or her parents; the police; or maybe all of them?
Nobody should applaud an establishment working under the rules and doing their best being shut down, but when that establishment has a known history of illegal activities on their platform/premises there's a case that can be built against them.
That said, the internet is not a bad, and as a globally accessible platform with no physical presence validating ID and policing users/content can be quite difficult. Hell, we see that here on Lemmy with a not insignificant number of people who engage in illicit activities or troll .
Not trying to victim blame here but what kind of idiot parent lets an underage child on the internet unrestricted. Like godam what do u think goes on online.
Oh, buddy, all of them
not all of them but most
Yeah, it's pretty damn hard to stop kids from doing things - especially since they have their own devices that are required for school.
what kind of idiot parent lets an underage child on the internet unrestricted
All of them? The only restrictions my parents gave were about the amount of time I spent there and it's the same story with all my friends.
Back in the dial up days, my dad installed a switch in the phone socket in his room (which was wired before the phone socket in the computer room) so he could disable the internet at night. I used to sneak in while he was snoring and crawl around the bed to switch it back on.
Point being, there's only so much you can do to prevent kids from accessing things they shouldn't. The right way to parent is to try and direct your kids towards the right things, but also offer age-appropriate yet honest explanations for the things they do find. But it's a difficult balance, as kids get older they deserve more privacy, and it's difficult enough for an individual to stay ahead of the tech curve than to keep your whole family on top of it.
As a nerdy kid growing up, I was in charge of implementing the household safety features for our internet. I explained what features there were, how they work, and they were active.
May have forgotten to mention/block VPN though. That always seemed to work perfectly every week.
Please don't lump me in with your irresponsible parents please and thank you.
That argument is getting weaker every year. Let's assume that the parents were 18 when they had her, that means the parents were born in 1985. That makes them millennials, who probably had the internet from at least 5 years old. So they aren't some ignorant boomers who have no idea what the internet is, and they can take steps to moderate the experience.
Born in 85 and had the internet since "at least" 5 years old? How many people are you thinking had internet in their home in 1990...?
In 95 it wasn't super common, and didn't really even start to explode until after 98...
Also, people are even less tech savvy now than they were then. It's becoming a real problem and is only seeming to get worse.
Also also no one is having kids at 18 anymore.
That said don't underestimate the tech saviness of Gen X, they may not have had a PC at home growing up but I'd say a lot of them were still able to hop on board, unlike boomers.
Scary thing is gen x is more likely to know how tech works than gen z is...
I'm GenX and since computers used to need more work, and my career followed the rise of computer software, I like messing with it. I am still often tech support for my millennial age kids, but the younger set (high school and college now) are outpacing me, especially the 19 year old. I maintain the home network but the 19 year old sails the seas for content, never needs my help with anything tech related, and can often help her older sisters with their questions now.
I would say the difference between us is that the younger ones seem to believe everything will work by itself, I believe most things can be fixed (and am delighted when it just works), the middle ones do not believe either of those things.
Yeah, they got their dates badly messed up. OTOH, being tech savvy has virtually nothing to do with being a responsible parent and understanding that the internet is full of stuff that's wildly inappropriate for children.
The problem with that is a vast majority of parents aren't responsible anymore and rely on outside systems to protect and raise their kids. :(
Yeah even mid-90's "the Internet" started with a doodadootdootdadadoot and wasn't exactly fast for the vast majority of little. Early 28.8kbps came out around '94-95, and real-time video of decent quality wasn't so much a thing. More like RealPlayer buffering.
That said, there was still plenty of janky stuff around. BBS's weren't uncommon even before that and generally had people uploading all sorts of stuff. Porn was plentiful, though you often had to wait upwards of a minute for that file to load and see if there were actual boobs.
Newsgroups were full of weird groups as well as fairly normal ones where the occasional troll would post nasty stuff.
You could definitely still run across predators hanging around in various places. IRC had tons of them, and A/S/L is a pretty well-known intro to this day. There were some video chats, though it would have been a pixel, low-FPS mess.
Nowadays the internet is faster, more connected globally and with more people. There's still terrible shit but I don't know that it's any more unexpected/unavoidable than back in the 28.8 days. Parents should be aware and children should be educated on how to be safe online, and platforms should do their best to stem abuse but that's not really an easy thing without style pretty strict ID requirements, which are often strongly resisted for privacy reasons.
Born in 93, my home had internet when I was like 5-6, but that was only for my mother to play virtual cards with friends and for research for her college. Didn't really have regular internet access until early 2000's.
the internet wasn't actually that available til 1994 or so, and the dot-com boom was late 90s.
You are not accounting for how lately average tech knowledge and skills have been declining rather than increasing, and that internet access is so ubiquitous that even given the best attempts at monitoring and restricting, there is no lack of alternate ways to access whatever one wants to.
Legitimately, it was much easier to control what kids accessed when the only place they could do that was the single family computer the household had.
Lol you're assuming that everyone had the internet in 1990? Most households didn't get it until the 00's. I was in the early group, and I didn't get it until around '95 (I still have dodgeball.exe downloaded from the Cartoon Network website in 1996). Most people I went to school with didn't have internet at all, many didn't even have a computer.
Even if you were clued up, is it really appropriate for parents to snoop on everything their child does? As they get older, it's expected that they have a little privacy to themselves, and arguably not giving them some privacy could be considered abuse.
Is it really appropriate for parents to snoop on everything their child does?
When did I say they need to be a helicopter parent? I am simply saying kids in the 90s had parents who did not grow up with this computer thing, and were not aware of what they could be doing. So kids could do whatever. This person obviously had this type of parent.
These days, if you're not at least taking an interest in what websites and communities they are participating in, you are not parenting.
what kind of idiot parent lets an underage child on the internet unrestricted.
I'm 35, and I have been online pretty much unrestricted since I'm 11/12ish. But yes, I saw some shits.
I'm a few years older than you, and when we were kids our parents didn't understand what the internet is and what the implications were.
Parents today don't have the luxury of claiming ignorance. The vast majority of people understand that the internet is full of dangers for kids (and everyone really).
I agree, the internet was still quite young in those days, I'm quite sure I wont be so open with internet access with my children (they are 7 and 2).
Ironicly same here. I did have to bypass restrictions put on me but i feel i earned to right to see fucked shit online by doing that.
Though it's not entirely without risk, I'm glad my parents, friends' parents and school did when I was a kid. I find it somehow sad if today's kids aren't exploring the web + world on their own (with advice) some of the time, and figuring out how to act carefully outside of the walled gardens, getting to know themselves and preparing for the realities of life.
COPPA
children under 13 can’t be online unsupervised
I think you forgot this: /s
I'm glad my dad has a no smartphone/electronics till you're 18.
When do the alcoholics get to sue the bars/pubs for "forcing" them to walk through the door and order a drink?
Another good thing falls to the whims of lack of personal responsibility, parenting, and Helen (won't someone think of the children?!) Lovejoy syndrome. Now the predators will just continue to do there thing in a darker hole that is even harder to find.
If a bar is consistently serving alcohol to minors, it deserves consequences.
Yeah there's literally laws against it lol. The op analogy sucks.
A bar can reliably verify the customer's age, a website can't do that.
The internet is not a safe space for children. It's absolutely the parents' responsibility to monitor their children's internet consumption.
If a drunk driver kills someone then the place who served them is sued
That darker hole is discord though, I wrote to them begging them to shut down their public server/community finder
I've been using Discord since 2017 and not once have I had some random stranger get naked on camera. I'm not saying that there aren't problems with it. There probably are. I just think that saying it's worse than Omegle is bizarre.
I didn’t say worse, I said it was the place they’d go to
But from my experience I’d say you’re lucky you haven’t been solicited or sent unrequested nude photos
I'm confused, are you saying that it was the 11 year old girl's personal responsibility to avoid being the victim of sexual abuse? Or are you saying that it was her parents' responsibility to be monitoring her technology use 24/7?
Neither seems right to me...
Now the predators will just continue to do there thing in a darker hole that is even harder to find.
If it's harder to find, then fewer children stumble upon it and get preyed upon, which is a good thing.
Or are you saying that it was her parents' responsibility to be monitoring her technology use 24/7?
Dunno about parent commenter, but that is exactly what I am saying.
The parent is responsible for the minor child's safety. That would include not giving her unmonitored unrestricted internet access until she reaches an age when she can safely use it. That is literally what parental controls are there for.
To make an analogy- The kid here was playing in the street and got hit by a drunk driver. The solution to that isn't to put Ford out of business for making the truck, or to put fences on every sidewalk. The solution is throw the drunk driver in jail and remind parents not to let their kids play in the street.
100% monitoring and control doesn't exist. Your children will find a loophole to access unrestricted internet, it's what they do.
Similarly, children will play in the street sometimes despite their parents' best efforts to keep them in. (And yes, I would penalize Ford for building the trucks that have exploded in size and are more likely to kill children, but that's a separate discussion.)
I get what you're saying, I just think it's wrong to say "parental responsibility" and dust off your hands like you solved the problem. A parent cannot exert their influence 24/7, they cannot be protecting their child 24/7. And that means that we need to rely on society to establish safer norms, safer streets, etc, so that there's a "soft landing" when kids inevitably rebel, or when the parent is in the shower for 15 minutes.
100% monitoring and control doesn’t exist. Your children will find a loophole to access unrestricted internet, it’s what they do.
And it's your job as a parent to ensure that they are equipped with good decision making skills so if/when they do encounter the 'big world' that they don't fall for predators or scams.
And that means that we need to rely on society to establish safer norms, safer streets, etc, so that there’s a “soft landing” when kids inevitably rebel, or when the parent is in the shower for 15 minutes.
It's not our job as society to grind down all the sharp edges of the world, especially when adults enjoy those sharp edges. It's our job as society to create defined and expected levels of risk and enforce them. For example, we make drivers generally responsible for watching where they're going, and we make crosswalks that are 'guaranteed safe' places to cross the street. So if you're willing to take risks you can cross wherever, and if you want to be sure you're safe there's a crosswalk. The level of risk is your choice.
The thing with the Internet is that it's there for everyone. You can't establish 'safer streets, soft landings' on the Internet without restricting what consenting adults can get. And there's currently no technology to verify someone's age without seriously invading their privacy.
Filtering Internet is and should be a client side problem. Had this parent installed one of the numerous Internet filtering products produced for this exact purpose, the did wouldn't have gotten groomed/abducted. Had this parent had a conversation with their kid about bad people online and offline, the kid would have told the rapist to fuck off and closed Omegle. There's several things that the parent could and should have done which fall under the realm of basic expectations of parents, and they didn't. That left their daughter open to being exploited by an awful person. NONE of that is Omegle's fault.
But switching gears- you talk about soft landings. What do you think should be the answer here? Do you think a site like Omegle shouldn't be allowed to exist? Where do you feel the responsibility of the parent and the site and society lies?
My point is that the safety of that 11 year old is no more Omegles responsibility than it is a bar’s responsibility to prevent the drunk from drinking.
If the answer to children getting into things that they shouldn’t is not allowing those things to exist then that is not a workable or desirable solution in the long term.
Children aren't supposed to play 18+ rated games. But few of them did so, we're shutting down all games👌
I don't understand the comparison. Are the children being preyed upon the alcoholics in this scenario?
No, the drunk children are sending dic pics on Discord, I think?
In 2022, there were 608,601 reports of child exploitation on Omegle to the nonprofit National Center for Missing and Exploited Children’s CyberTipline. Of all the sites the center tracked, only Facebook, Google, Instagram, and WhatsApp ranked higher.
That's a crazy high number. Especially for a live content platform which I assume can only ever have individual reports of live interactions?
Of all the sites the center tracked, only Facebook, Google, Instagram, and WhatsApp ranked higher.
If there are four that are worse, "only" seems out of place on that sentence.
I was surprised by that too. It also minimizes the sheer amount of users on those platforms. We're talking billions of people if not nearly every single person in the world.
I have a fundamental question about this case: was he there physically with her? Coercion is one thing, but the word "force" implies he was somehow in control. I am in no way defending him, but it reeks terribly of the "look what you made me do" vibe and I feel somewhat uneasy about how this played out.
Omegle was a piece of the internet I never partook in. It never appealed to me to talk with random internet people. Perhaps I don't understand why he had power over her.
Edit: thanks, I everyone. I get it from a subjective position.
Her lawsuit, filed in 2021, alleged that she met a man in his thirties on Omegle who forced her to take naked photos and videos over a three-year period. She was just 11 when it began in 2014.
Not all methods of force are physical. This was an adult talking to an 11 year old. 11 year olds have in many cases not had enough life experience to understand that there are adults that will manipulate them in this way. It’s possible he got her to do things and then blackmailed her for more. Regardless of how he did it, he was an adult and she was an 11 year old child. Not acceptable no matter the circumstance.
Perhaps I don't understand why he had power over her.
One can have leverage over another person by threatening to harm oneself or someone else.
There's been many cases in omegle of people threatening "show me your boobs or I'll kill this pet". If the victim complies, the agressor may continue through blackmailing.
I can only assume but the first few pictures where probably coerced and after wards she was threatened to send more or he would release them. That definitely counts as forced. She was only 11 and this thing went on for 3 years. It's definitely not just "look what you made me do".
You can force someone to do something without being physically present.
I'm really confused am I supposed to have heard of this website apparently everybody haves been using it for over a decade and I feel like I'm from a parallel universe. What the hell is this website?
Sad to see internet getting regulated. At this pace there would be requirements to link all accounts , everything with government identification documents.
Oh its already happening slowly.....
Next thing you know there is no more partial anonymous sites and no one can do it without major legal challenges.
That's not what this is about. Omegle wasn't following the regulations we already have, and therefore didn't get the benefits of protection the other sites do:
In the US, social platforms are often protected by Section 230, a broad act that shields them from liability for the content their users post. But the judge in A.M.’s case found last July that Omegle’s design was at fault and it was not protected by Section 230: It could have worked to prevent matches between minors and adults before sexual content was even sent, the judge said.
What was the declared age?
Well, the hard part is determining if declared age was authentic.
OK that makes sense.
Disgusting that the shutdown note tried to play off their serious issues with grooming and sexual abuse and claim they did a lot. Fuck that asshole.
Edit: Uh oh I’m being downvoted by his fan boys. The article (and successful lawsuit) say’s exactly what I’m saying and anyone who at scale enables mass sexual abuse of children is an asshole. Omegle had no other uses for most of its existence, hypotheticals sure but as the article mentions in practice it was overwhelmingly full of naked men trying to find women and children to interact with sexually. The site runner was flagrantly negligent.
Gosh I love certain types, you’ll rightly jump on a pastor who looked the other way for sexual abuse happening in his church as being responsible, yet a guy who runs a big website for years full of abuse is taken at his word as a sweet, innocent, helpless, benevolent advocate for a better web because he talks right. (Never mind he deliberately obfuscated the horrors happening on his website with his closing statement which people here ate up. It takes a lot to lose safe harbor)
The design of the website clearly had serious issues. As example, the matchmaking should have been massively reworked.
They can't account for people lying about their age. She started using the platform at 11. I'd be curious to know what profile info she did enter, and what age that displayed her as.
As a child, ultimately her parents are responsible. They should be held accountable for putting their child in danger.
The groomer was a predator, same as if lurking on the playground. They must be charged to the maximum possible.
I don't intend to victim blame or defend any abusers here; this shit is vile and should not be tolerated, period.
From the below, it sounds like it was determined that, despite Omegle's moderation efforts, Omegle could have done better in areas relating to age verification and matchmaking. So I'm not trying to defend or minimize Omegle's role either, I don't know the details of how the site worked but it sounds like this was a problem for a long time:
Again, to be clear, not trying to say that the victim should, or even could, have done anything differently. Victim blaming is bad. But how the hell are they saying "forced" to do something by some scumbag over the internet? What kind of conditions does a kid have to be in at home to feel like they can't turn to their parent/guardian for help in a terrifying situation like that? How is an 11-year-old in 2014 being allowed to get into that situation in the first place, between her parents and her school?
It seems like this victim was failed by every support system she should have been able to rely on. This is so messed up. This is exactly why we need things like sex education and Internet safety education.
This is a failure of parenting. WTF is an 11 year old doing on Omegle?
It just isn’t that simple. I’ve got four kids. At least one of them ended up watching a naked man on Omegle once. And I say this because they were in a group of friends and dared each other on, on a school trip, and they were discovered (one of them felt pretty shocked and told a teacher) and we had a big discussion with her.
Kids do dumb shit all the time. Omegle is (was) very much known about amongst them all.
So, even with careful parenting and a locked down internet, and policies not to have phones upstairs in your room, kids do dumb shit or find a new service that isn’t in your filter, because they’ve heard about it through their friends. I know because my wife and I carefully raise four kids and the internet is a fucking onslaught to a dopamine dependent, approval seeking teenager.
I’m not saying “it’s all Omegle’s fault”. Everyone had a role to play. But let’s not pretend Omegle was blameless.
You can parent your children all day long and everything is just fine at home. As soon as your kids are unleashed into the world of school, it's anything goes. Your child is immediately subjected to all the poor and awful parenting that is outside your control. The only thing you can do is give them skills to navigate those situations. Sounds like @sunbeam60@lemmy.one did just that. Bravo.
It's almost like we should focus on educating them about how to responsibly use the Internet instead of trying to censor their access to it (which as you pointed out, basically never works).
Does anyone actually think shutting down one specific website will make a meaningful difference? Like... really? Did shutting down Napster stop piracy? Did shutting down Silk Road stop online drug sales?
There was a group from Brazil doing stuff like that and got publicized when they were arrested recently. Usually they'd coerce the minor into sending one picture, then use it as blackmail against them to give them more. They might even gaslight them to convince them that they'll get in big trouble if they tell anyone and it'll just get worse for them.
I've seen full fledged adults taken hard by scammers and willingly giving them thousands of dollars against their own interests, and they heavily distrust and resist anyone trying to help them. I can only imagine accomplishing that with a child that lacks long term thinking skills is even more effective.
Literally a black mirror episode
children are incredibly easy to influence. "if you don't do it I will find where you live and harm your family, and do not call the cops/tell your parents" is often enough threat.
The common thing I've seen in more well -knowncases was the abuser striking up a relationship and pretending to be somebody younger, getting compromising details/photos from the victim, then threatening to release those to family/friends unless the victim follows their wishes (which often providing further sexual images/acts).
Not sure if that might be the case with a service like Omegle, but it was essentially what happened in the Amanda Todd case and other similar cases.
what if the children play Roblox and are aware of the existence of pedos, they will be more careful right?
Or… close the tab?
Or click unmatch
God, this entire comment section is nothing but
"I'm not victim blaming, but..."
"personal responsibility"
"parents should be doing blah blah blah....no, I don't have kids."
The best parents in the world still can't control what their kids are doing every second of every day. Kids will always find ways around every single thing that's meant to restrict what they can do, see, or hear. I'm sure you never did stuff you weren't supposed to when you were a kid...right?
Yeah, and we could shut down the Internet all together... or we could be realistic about prevention.
And yes, I accessed lots of 'sensitive' material online as a kid well before this website existed. So I find it hard to blame this specific website...websites come and go. I do however absolutely blame the creep himself since they are the one who did something wrong. Not the website.
Thank you for adding just another reason for the myriad of pre-existing ones that convinced me of never having kids.
I'll do it then, I am victim-blaming. An 11 year old broke the rules and logged onto a website that she shouldn't be on and then somehow a 30 year old guy forced her to take naked pictures. The problem wasn't the website, it's this child that broke the rules and doesn't know not to do things for strangers on the internet.
Dude, the victim is literally a child.
Hence why it's easy to understand that she made this mistake. Her parents might as well sue the ISP for enabling this communication to take place.
An 11 year old child should be expected to break rules and at times end up where they aren't supposed to be. 30 year old fucking predators shouldn't be taking advantage of that.
This is like shaming a 20 year old for dressing in a gogo skirt, raping her, and then saying "she was asking for it".
No. She wasn't the problem. Your depraved ass was.
Men are fucking pigs and I don't trust the lot of you.
Source: me. A man and a father.
Sure, but shutting down the website is like shutting down the club that the slutty 20 year old dressed up slutty for and went to on the night a creep raped her. Maybe she had a fake ID (if USA at least). And yeah, perhaps the club should be more careful about fake IDs. But the club didn't rape anyone, the rapist did. And shutting down club A for club B to replace it will do nothing to prevent future rapes.
No offense to the good people in Omegle but let's be real, that site like many other of these "anonymous chat" sites are rife with people like that dude. If a website can't better control the traffic then shut it down. A night club has a bouncer and to your point can check and ID and fake or not I highly doubt an 11 year old is getting in.
Shutting down the site is a small price to pay to protect youth doing what youth are made to do which is test limits.
Chat Roulette, the site Omegle copied the video format from, had a built in report option that would ban nude people.
So have you heard of emotional violence or exploitation? That's how that works over the internet. You don't need to be in the same room to be forced to do something if you're vulnerable.
OP addressed that already. OP is saying something akin to the following:
"A kid wanders at night alone and gets into a run down bar. She gets groped. The police shuts down the bar, everyone applauds. But what is a kid doing wandering around at night unsupervised?! Where are the parents?"
This is a bad analogy, a child can't wander into a shady bar, late at night, while at home, in their room, while doing what they can to hide their activities from their parents, in the way that they can going on an inappropriate website.
If they're going on inappropriate websites then that's their problem. I'm sure any good parent would teach their kid about actions having consequences...
I mean, realistically we all did, unless you grew up during time when there was no internet. My mother was concerned about it when she found out I had watched porn when I was 13, but nothing more. Funny thing is that my mother brough it up to my father and he was like yeah ok he's a teenager. Lmao. But here I am today, I find porn extremely boring and didn't watch it for over a decade, maybe I could have porn addiction if my parents decided to block internet over it instead.
The thing online that traumatizes me the most is the thought that people turn off kid's internet instead of teaching them how to deal with strangers properly, because believe it or not, outside world is a lot more scary than internet.
A 11 year old can know to stop replying if someone asks their home address online, same kid can get kidnapped and have it be beaten out of them in the real world.
Shield a kid from the horrors of the world, the you'll have a dumb adult in he future.
Teach your kids how to spot danger and how to handle all the world's bullshit, then you'll have a smart adult in the future.
Don't baby your kids please.
This does not get into the fine details of what happened. They could have had something going, deceitfully or not, that convinced them they had no other choice. Anyway, that wasn't the point I was making. I was pointing out that a child sneaking away to a shady bar in the middle of the night has much more serious implications of negligence than a kid going to an inappropriate website.
Bro. Analogies don't need to be 100% realistic.
How many analogies have you read involving fictional characters? Or saying stuff like "that's a catch-22"? Do you say "actually, that phrase comes from a work of fiction, so it's invalid"?
"It's like when Homer can't stop eating donuts" - "Oh but Homer doesn't exist. Checkmate!"
An ant carrying a leave is like a dude carrying three cars on his back. "Whoa! It's impossible for a dude to carry that much weight!"
Well, The shady bar thing has happened before. So it's not unrealistic and that wasn't my point anyway. It simply does not fit the situation provided in the way the poster is trying to use it. There are far, far, greater implications of negligence for a child sneaking away, to a shady bar, in the middle of the night, than there is with a kid going on an inappropriate website.
Or even the opposite analogy. A guy goes to a bar that has an ID requirement. Has a few drinks. Meets a girl. They end up having a conversation and she and he hook up.
A week later, the cops show and the guy is charged with a sex crime because the girl was under 18 even though:
By all appearances she was of a similar age to him and consenting
She was in a place where only adults would be expected to attend
The ID requirement of the establishment meant that she should have been well above 18
So what's the liability of the bar, both towards allowing underage patrons and allowing them to hook up with older individuals while potentially intoxicated? Could they be sued and/or shut down? How does that story change if the bar was known to look the other way on underage patrons, or not properly check ID? How about if the girl in question was known by some of the staff? How about if the man knew that underage patrons were not uncommon.
Who has a case against the bar: the man; the girl or her parents; the police; or maybe all of them?
Nobody should applaud an establishment working under the rules and doing their best being shut down, but when that establishment has a known history of illegal activities on their platform/premises there's a case that can be built against them.
That said, the internet is not a bad, and as a globally accessible platform with no physical presence validating ID and policing users/content can be quite difficult. Hell, we see that here on Lemmy with a not insignificant number of people who engage in illicit activities or troll .
Not trying to victim blame here but what kind of idiot parent lets an underage child on the internet unrestricted. Like godam what do u think goes on online.
Oh, buddy, all of them
not all of them but most
Yeah, it's pretty damn hard to stop kids from doing things - especially since they have their own devices that are required for school.
All of them? The only restrictions my parents gave were about the amount of time I spent there and it's the same story with all my friends.
Back in the dial up days, my dad installed a switch in the phone socket in his room (which was wired before the phone socket in the computer room) so he could disable the internet at night. I used to sneak in while he was snoring and crawl around the bed to switch it back on.
Point being, there's only so much you can do to prevent kids from accessing things they shouldn't. The right way to parent is to try and direct your kids towards the right things, but also offer age-appropriate yet honest explanations for the things they do find. But it's a difficult balance, as kids get older they deserve more privacy, and it's difficult enough for an individual to stay ahead of the tech curve than to keep your whole family on top of it.
As a nerdy kid growing up, I was in charge of implementing the household safety features for our internet. I explained what features there were, how they work, and they were active.
May have forgotten to mention/block VPN though. That always seemed to work perfectly every week.
Please don't lump me in with your irresponsible parents please and thank you.
That argument is getting weaker every year. Let's assume that the parents were 18 when they had her, that means the parents were born in 1985. That makes them millennials, who probably had the internet from at least 5 years old. So they aren't some ignorant boomers who have no idea what the internet is, and they can take steps to moderate the experience.
Born in 85 and had the internet since "at least" 5 years old? How many people are you thinking had internet in their home in 1990...?
In 95 it wasn't super common, and didn't really even start to explode until after 98...
Also, people are even less tech savvy now than they were then. It's becoming a real problem and is only seeming to get worse.
Also also no one is having kids at 18 anymore.
That said don't underestimate the tech saviness of Gen X, they may not have had a PC at home growing up but I'd say a lot of them were still able to hop on board, unlike boomers.
Scary thing is gen x is more likely to know how tech works than gen z is...
I'm GenX and since computers used to need more work, and my career followed the rise of computer software, I like messing with it. I am still often tech support for my millennial age kids, but the younger set (high school and college now) are outpacing me, especially the 19 year old. I maintain the home network but the 19 year old sails the seas for content, never needs my help with anything tech related, and can often help her older sisters with their questions now.
I would say the difference between us is that the younger ones seem to believe everything will work by itself, I believe most things can be fixed (and am delighted when it just works), the middle ones do not believe either of those things.
Yeah, they got their dates badly messed up. OTOH, being tech savvy has virtually nothing to do with being a responsible parent and understanding that the internet is full of stuff that's wildly inappropriate for children.
The problem with that is a vast majority of parents aren't responsible anymore and rely on outside systems to protect and raise their kids. :(
Yeah even mid-90's "the Internet" started with a doodadootdootdadadoot and wasn't exactly fast for the vast majority of little. Early 28.8kbps came out around '94-95, and real-time video of decent quality wasn't so much a thing. More like RealPlayer buffering.
That said, there was still plenty of janky stuff around. BBS's weren't uncommon even before that and generally had people uploading all sorts of stuff. Porn was plentiful, though you often had to wait upwards of a minute for that file to load and see if there were actual boobs.
Newsgroups were full of weird groups as well as fairly normal ones where the occasional troll would post nasty stuff.
You could definitely still run across predators hanging around in various places. IRC had tons of them, and A/S/L is a pretty well-known intro to this day. There were some video chats, though it would have been a pixel, low-FPS mess.
Nowadays the internet is faster, more connected globally and with more people. There's still terrible shit but I don't know that it's any more unexpected/unavoidable than back in the 28.8 days. Parents should be aware and children should be educated on how to be safe online, and platforms should do their best to stem abuse but that's not really an easy thing without style pretty strict ID requirements, which are often strongly resisted for privacy reasons.
Born in 93, my home had internet when I was like 5-6, but that was only for my mother to play virtual cards with friends and for research for her college. Didn't really have regular internet access until early 2000's.
the internet wasn't actually that available til 1994 or so, and the dot-com boom was late 90s.
You are not accounting for how lately average tech knowledge and skills have been declining rather than increasing, and that internet access is so ubiquitous that even given the best attempts at monitoring and restricting, there is no lack of alternate ways to access whatever one wants to.
Legitimately, it was much easier to control what kids accessed when the only place they could do that was the single family computer the household had.
Lol you're assuming that everyone had the internet in 1990? Most households didn't get it until the 00's. I was in the early group, and I didn't get it until around '95 (I still have dodgeball.exe downloaded from the Cartoon Network website in 1996). Most people I went to school with didn't have internet at all, many didn't even have a computer.
Even if you were clued up, is it really appropriate for parents to snoop on everything their child does? As they get older, it's expected that they have a little privacy to themselves, and arguably not giving them some privacy could be considered abuse.
When did I say they need to be a helicopter parent? I am simply saying kids in the 90s had parents who did not grow up with this computer thing, and were not aware of what they could be doing. So kids could do whatever. This person obviously had this type of parent.
These days, if you're not at least taking an interest in what websites and communities they are participating in, you are not parenting.
I'm 35, and I have been online pretty much unrestricted since I'm 11/12ish. But yes, I saw some shits.
I'm a few years older than you, and when we were kids our parents didn't understand what the internet is and what the implications were.
Parents today don't have the luxury of claiming ignorance. The vast majority of people understand that the internet is full of dangers for kids (and everyone really).
I agree, the internet was still quite young in those days, I'm quite sure I wont be so open with internet access with my children (they are 7 and 2).
Ironicly same here. I did have to bypass restrictions put on me but i feel i earned to right to see fucked shit online by doing that.
Though it's not entirely without risk, I'm glad my parents, friends' parents and school did when I was a kid. I find it somehow sad if today's kids aren't exploring the web + world on their own (with advice) some of the time, and figuring out how to act carefully outside of the walled gardens, getting to know themselves and preparing for the realities of life.
COPPA
children under 13 can’t be online unsupervised
I think you forgot this: /s
I'm glad my dad has a no smartphone/electronics till you're 18.
When do the alcoholics get to sue the bars/pubs for "forcing" them to walk through the door and order a drink?
Another good thing falls to the whims of lack of personal responsibility, parenting, and Helen (won't someone think of the children?!) Lovejoy syndrome. Now the predators will just continue to do there thing in a darker hole that is even harder to find.
If a bar is consistently serving alcohol to minors, it deserves consequences.
Yeah there's literally laws against it lol. The op analogy sucks.
A bar can reliably verify the customer's age, a website can't do that.
The internet is not a safe space for children. It's absolutely the parents' responsibility to monitor their children's internet consumption.
If a drunk driver kills someone then the place who served them is sued
That darker hole is discord though, I wrote to them begging them to shut down their public server/community finder
I've been using Discord since 2017 and not once have I had some random stranger get naked on camera. I'm not saying that there aren't problems with it. There probably are. I just think that saying it's worse than Omegle is bizarre.
I didn’t say worse, I said it was the place they’d go to
But from my experience I’d say you’re lucky you haven’t been solicited or sent unrequested nude photos
I'm confused, are you saying that it was the 11 year old girl's personal responsibility to avoid being the victim of sexual abuse? Or are you saying that it was her parents' responsibility to be monitoring her technology use 24/7?
Neither seems right to me...
If it's harder to find, then fewer children stumble upon it and get preyed upon, which is a good thing.
Dunno about parent commenter, but that is exactly what I am saying. The parent is responsible for the minor child's safety. That would include not giving her unmonitored unrestricted internet access until she reaches an age when she can safely use it. That is literally what parental controls are there for.
To make an analogy- The kid here was playing in the street and got hit by a drunk driver. The solution to that isn't to put Ford out of business for making the truck, or to put fences on every sidewalk. The solution is throw the drunk driver in jail and remind parents not to let their kids play in the street.
100% monitoring and control doesn't exist. Your children will find a loophole to access unrestricted internet, it's what they do.
Similarly, children will play in the street sometimes despite their parents' best efforts to keep them in. (And yes, I would penalize Ford for building the trucks that have exploded in size and are more likely to kill children, but that's a separate discussion.)
I get what you're saying, I just think it's wrong to say "parental responsibility" and dust off your hands like you solved the problem. A parent cannot exert their influence 24/7, they cannot be protecting their child 24/7. And that means that we need to rely on society to establish safer norms, safer streets, etc, so that there's a "soft landing" when kids inevitably rebel, or when the parent is in the shower for 15 minutes.
And it's your job as a parent to ensure that they are equipped with good decision making skills so if/when they do encounter the 'big world' that they don't fall for predators or scams.
It's not our job as society to grind down all the sharp edges of the world, especially when adults enjoy those sharp edges. It's our job as society to create defined and expected levels of risk and enforce them. For example, we make drivers generally responsible for watching where they're going, and we make crosswalks that are 'guaranteed safe' places to cross the street. So if you're willing to take risks you can cross wherever, and if you want to be sure you're safe there's a crosswalk. The level of risk is your choice.
The thing with the Internet is that it's there for everyone. You can't establish 'safer streets, soft landings' on the Internet without restricting what consenting adults can get. And there's currently no technology to verify someone's age without seriously invading their privacy.
Filtering Internet is and should be a client side problem. Had this parent installed one of the numerous Internet filtering products produced for this exact purpose, the did wouldn't have gotten groomed/abducted. Had this parent had a conversation with their kid about bad people online and offline, the kid would have told the rapist to fuck off and closed Omegle. There's several things that the parent could and should have done which fall under the realm of basic expectations of parents, and they didn't. That left their daughter open to being exploited by an awful person. NONE of that is Omegle's fault.
But switching gears- you talk about soft landings. What do you think should be the answer here? Do you think a site like Omegle shouldn't be allowed to exist? Where do you feel the responsibility of the parent and the site and society lies?
My point is that the safety of that 11 year old is no more Omegles responsibility than it is a bar’s responsibility to prevent the drunk from drinking.
If the answer to children getting into things that they shouldn’t is not allowing those things to exist then that is not a workable or desirable solution in the long term.
Children aren't supposed to play 18+ rated games. But few of them did so, we're shutting down all games👌
I don't understand the comparison. Are the children being preyed upon the alcoholics in this scenario?
No, the drunk children are sending dic pics on Discord, I think?
That's a crazy high number. Especially for a live content platform which I assume can only ever have individual reports of live interactions?
If there are four that are worse, "only" seems out of place on that sentence.
I was surprised by that too. It also minimizes the sheer amount of users on those platforms. We're talking billions of people if not nearly every single person in the world.
How many daily users did Omegle have?
This site says 3.35 million daily active users.
I guess having so many fewer users made Omegle a bigger problem, proportionally.
???
YouTube
Parents fault, not the site.
Parents don't know DNS...
I have a fundamental question about this case: was he there physically with her? Coercion is one thing, but the word "force" implies he was somehow in control. I am in no way defending him, but it reeks terribly of the "look what you made me do" vibe and I feel somewhat uneasy about how this played out.
Omegle was a piece of the internet I never partook in. It never appealed to me to talk with random internet people. Perhaps I don't understand why he had power over her.
Edit: thanks, I everyone. I get it from a subjective position.
Not all methods of force are physical. This was an adult talking to an 11 year old. 11 year olds have in many cases not had enough life experience to understand that there are adults that will manipulate them in this way. It’s possible he got her to do things and then blackmailed her for more. Regardless of how he did it, he was an adult and she was an 11 year old child. Not acceptable no matter the circumstance.
One can have leverage over another person by threatening to harm oneself or someone else.
There's been many cases in omegle of people threatening "show me your boobs or I'll kill this pet". If the victim complies, the agressor may continue through blackmailing.
I can only assume but the first few pictures where probably coerced and after wards she was threatened to send more or he would release them. That definitely counts as forced. She was only 11 and this thing went on for 3 years. It's definitely not just "look what you made me do".
You can force someone to do something without being physically present.
He somehow got her to get started and then threatened her, saying that she was now complicit in making illegal porn and would get in trouble.
I'm honestly surprised it took this long
Archived version: https://archive.is/0eou1
Autoplaying unrelated videos. Shit wasteful website.
I'm really confused am I supposed to have heard of this website apparently everybody haves been using it for over a decade and I feel like I'm from a parallel universe. What the hell is this website?
When I was a kid I dialed random numbers and made prank calls to strangers I didn’t know.
Everyone jokes about all the wild shit that happened on Omegle, but all that shit was never 'ok'.
Itt: sad and angry millennials who want to see an endless barrage of men jacking off
That's nuts! I thought that Omegle was text only. I had no idea that they paired you with people on video. WTF thought that was a good idea?!?
It had video for a reeeaally long time.
I may be misremembering but I feel like it always had video.
It started just text
Fair enough. Maybe it had video by the time I discovered it or my memory is just failing me.
Idk why this is being downvoted
-1 it's his/er right not to know
-2 "WTF thought that was a good idea?!?" Its a perfectly valid question
I frequent Omegle too when it was text only, like more than a decade ago. Had a good time and didn't see a single dick.
Sad to see internet getting regulated. At this pace there would be requirements to link all accounts , everything with government identification documents. Oh its already happening slowly.....
Next thing you know there is no more partial anonymous sites and no one can do it without major legal challenges.
That's not what this is about. Omegle wasn't following the regulations we already have, and therefore didn't get the benefits of protection the other sites do:
What was the declared age?
Well, the hard part is determining if declared age was authentic.
OK that makes sense.
Disgusting that the shutdown note tried to play off their serious issues with grooming and sexual abuse and claim they did a lot. Fuck that asshole.
Edit: Uh oh I’m being downvoted by his fan boys. The article (and successful lawsuit) say’s exactly what I’m saying and anyone who at scale enables mass sexual abuse of children is an asshole. Omegle had no other uses for most of its existence, hypotheticals sure but as the article mentions in practice it was overwhelmingly full of naked men trying to find women and children to interact with sexually. The site runner was flagrantly negligent.
Gosh I love certain types, you’ll rightly jump on a pastor who looked the other way for sexual abuse happening in his church as being responsible, yet a guy who runs a big website for years full of abuse is taken at his word as a sweet, innocent, helpless, benevolent advocate for a better web because he talks right. (Never mind he deliberately obfuscated the horrors happening on his website with his closing statement which people here ate up. It takes a lot to lose safe harbor)
The design of the website clearly had serious issues. As example, the matchmaking should have been massively reworked.
They can't account for people lying about their age. She started using the platform at 11. I'd be curious to know what profile info she did enter, and what age that displayed her as.
As a child, ultimately her parents are responsible. They should be held accountable for putting their child in danger.
The groomer was a predator, same as if lurking on the playground. They must be charged to the maximum possible.