Here is a copy of the text on the website because I believe it does a very good job at pointing out the issues in current society:
Dear strangers,
From the moment I discovered the Internet at a young age, it has been a magical place to me. Growing up in a small town, relatively isolated from the larger world, it was a revelation how much more there was to discover – how many interesting people and ideas the world had to offer.
As a young teenager, I couldn’t just waltz onto a college campus and tell a student: “Let’s debate moral philosophy!” I couldn’t walk up to a professor and say: “Tell me something interesting about microeconomics!” But online, I was able to meet those people, and have those conversations. I was also an avid Wikipedia editor; I contributed to open source software projects; and I often helped answer computer programming questions posed by people many years older than me.
In short, the Internet opened the door to a much larger, more diverse, and more vibrant world than I would have otherwise been able to experience; and enabled me to be an active participant in, and contributor to, that world. All of this helped me to learn, and to grow into a more well-rounded person.
Moreover, as a survivor of childhood rape, I was acutely aware that any time I interacted with someone in the physical world, I was risking my physical body. The Internet gave me a refuge from that fear. I was under no illusion that only good people used the Internet; but I knew that, if I said “no” to someone online, they couldn’t physically reach through the screen and hold a weapon to my head, or worse. I saw the miles of copper wires and fiber-optic cables between me and other people as a kind of shield – one that empowered me to be less isolated than my trauma and fear would have otherwise allowed.
I launched Omegle when I was 18 years old, and still living with my parents. It was meant to build on the things I loved about the Internet, while introducing a form of social spontaneity that I felt didn’t exist elsewhere. 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.
The premise was rather straightforward: when you used Omegle, it would randomly place you in a chat with someone else. These chats could be as long or as short as you chose. If you didn’t want to talk to a particular person, for whatever reason, you could simply end the chat and – if desired – move onto another chat with someone else. It was the idea of “meeting new people” distilled down to almost its platonic ideal.
finthechat@kbin.social 1 year ago
tl;dr - a small number of bad actors are causing too much trouble, so the owner is pulling the plug on Omegle rather than continuing to fight uphill against it. The post is also a sad farewell letter where Leif reminisces a bit about the old internet and how people used to actually use it to not be total assholes to strangers all the time
Relevant bits:
Geth@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 year ago
I never used the site but as far as I’ve seen, whenever you encounter an asshole the only option was to skip to the next person. Was there a report button? A voting system might have worked, where down voted people or bots would be isolated and excluded from the community.
zaphod@feddit.de 1 year ago
Not sure that existed, but how would it work? There were no accounts and IPs are ephemeral.
ubermeisters@lemmy.world 1 year ago
“Small number”
Really making that phrase do a lot of work here aren’t you?
Kissaki@feddit.de 1 year ago
This comment could have been formulated in a non-aggressive tone, as a question or opinion, or reasoned criticism. Instead they chose a passive aggressive tone.
Really ironic and sad in the context of this topic, and right below the quotes like
Modva@lemmy.world 1 year ago
And no self awareness in sight.
Son_of_dad@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Should have left the site up and sold it to the DOJ. It’s a steady stream of chomos for them to arrest and use the site like hireahitman.com turned out.