BBC: The woman who successfully sued the website that matched her with a paedophile explains how she forced the site to close down. 'Alice', or A.M. as she was known in court says she feels "vindic...

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• ExLisper@linux.community ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  I don’t get it. So someone let 11 yo kid use internet unmonitored and it’s the Internet’s fault? Isn’t it up to parents to know when their kid can go on the internet alone?

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  • SPRUNT@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Spoken like a true non-parent and someone who forgot about everything they got away with as a youth.

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    • ExLisper@linux.community ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      I didn’t have internet until I was able to take responsibility for what I do with it. Not because my parents were so smart but because it simply wasn’t available where I lived. The only thing that affected me negatively for life was religion and I totally believe my parents are responsible, not the bible.

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• Hacksaw@lemmy.ca ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  I feel this is a big win for her, she obviously suffered a horrible trauma and this website was what facilitated that.

  I don’t know how this is a win for the internet. This was a website that clearly said “we connect random strangers”, and they did, and a fucked up thing happened as an improbable event based on human nature. It doesn’t seem to be caused by some fundamental aspect of the way the website works. I don’t really know how this could have been avoided. How would the website know who is a pedophile? How would the website know who is a child? I can’t think of a way without fundamentally changing user identity on the internet. I’m not sure what this means for anonymous internet interactions.

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  • NuXCOM_90Percent@lemmy.zip ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    It means what it has meant since the first fifty seconds someone used chat roulette or uno on Xbox

    Random unmoderated sites like this are horrifying and a danger to both people and society.

    There are arguments to be made about moderation in general. But this is not a high capacity rifle with questionable purpose. This is a pistol where the barrel is pointed backwards

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    • Hacksaw@lemmy.ca ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      I can see your argument that you shouldn’t meet strangers in a private place. I mean in real life you would go to a public space if you wanted to meet new people rather than invite strangers into your living room. That wouldn’t be safe and people who facilitate that would be pretty irresponsible. That’s basically what omegle was doing.

      I might be coming around. I think this will have to be very carefully managed to avoid slipping too far. There are already conservatives pushing for mandatory government ID check for viewing adult material online. I could easily see that same narrative pushed here. I think there is a real danger to the kind of censorship that is created when anonymity is removed by mandate from the internet.

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• FishFace@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Next year the city park will be forced to close down after the council was sued for by a woman who was allowed to meet a paedophile in it as a child.

  Children need to be taught how to not get abused by strangers offline and online. If they aren’t, it’s not the fault of the place that allowed them to meet. When I was a child I was using the internet to talk to adults and had a great time. (The adults who had to deal with my crappy attitude before I learnt some netiquette probably had a less great time…)

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  • biHeart@programming.dev ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Taught not to get abused? I think you mean “stranger danger” shit, which is taught but the way you phrased that is disturbing. It’s not a child’s job to “not get abused by ‘anyone’”. And all places in general should probably keep an eye on who comes in and out, except for niche/specialized services like vpns, warez, etc. That’s just called being responsible.

    Parks and other ‘loose’ non-stores though shouldn’t be held responsible, I agree.

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  • ThatWeirdGuy1001@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    You forget that children can be easily manipulated as their brains are literally not capable of proper judgement in most situations

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    • FishFace@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Mm, I guess that’s why the park needs to be shut/we can never let children go there unattended.

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  • Haha@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    There are days like these where I’m glad it’s not morons like you who run things because the world would genuinely be an even shittier place with takes like. Mental gymnastics to blaming children for being abused.

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    • FishFace@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Children need to be taught

      That does not place the blame on the children.

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  • Nurse_Robot@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    That’s a deeply creepy take

    Don’t blame the pedophiles, blame the children!

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    • phx@lemmy.ca ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      You can still blame the pedophiles while also teaching kids safe internet etiquette so that they don’t fall prey to one.

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    • FishFace@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Uh, since when is it the children’s fault if they aren’t taught something? I’m blaming the parents!

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  • LWD@lemm.ee ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    [deleted]

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    • FishFace@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Why does Omegle being privately owned matter? Does a city council have less responsibility than a private business to prevent harm? Do your parks have security patrolling them? I’ve never seen that. Was Omegle “full” of perverts, or were there are a handful in comparison to the many ordinary users, but our attention naturally focuses on the aberrant cases?

      “club” implies membership, which Omegle didn’t have, which is the whole issue, and why I went with a park which anyone can enter without registering, not a club.

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  • LWD@lemm.ee ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    [deleted]

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    • FishFace@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      FWIW, LWD’s ability to click “reply” outran his ability fill those replies with meaningful words, and instead of admitting they can’t back up their opinion they’re resorting to insults and insinuation.

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• Zak@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  This reminds me of Greyhound getting sued after a murder on their bus.

  I don’t like the implications of either. All responsibility for a crime should lie with the criminal, not the operator of the venue in which it occurred. In the case of Greyhound, it resulted in them frisking people boarding busses and banning pocket knives. In the case of Omeagle, the site shut down. Both times, I think the world got a little bit worse.

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• SilentStorms@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  I miss when Omegle was just text based. I made a friend from Czechia on there back in 2011.

  Opening up video chats was asking for this to happen.

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  • Siegfried@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    In retrospective, it feels unreal that the site made it this far into 2023

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    • SilentStorms@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      ChatRoulette is still around, which is nuts. That place was a cesspit 10 years ago, can’t imagine now.

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  • kurcatovium@lemm.ee ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Hello from Czechia.

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• Pat@kbin.run ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  As much as omegle was a cesspit, there are already even sketchier alternatives up and running. This will be a wild goose chase with no end in sight unless sites like this get rid of all privacy and log every single interaction and step up their moderation.

  Like piracy sites and other illegal/grey areas, take one source down and two more will appear, or however the saying goes.

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  • Joker@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    These sites are the glory holes of the internet.

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• stifle867@programming.dev ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  I really don’t understand how you can “force” anyone to do anything over Omegle but I guess that’s neither here nor there. The more important point is that it would have been better to take the opportunity to catch more pedos doing the same thing on this site. They’re still out there just moved to different platforms now. It’s not really the win she thinks it is. There’s HIGHLY questionable/NSFL stuff even on TikTok and Google Photos.

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• ExfilBravo@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Poor Peter File. Dude get a bad wrap.

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  • victorz@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Hey **Peter! ** 👨‍🦽

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• bizarrocullen@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Wow! I haven’t heard of omegle since I left memebase in 2013.

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• HawlSera@lemm.ee ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Omegle got shut down?

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  • victorz@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Myeah.

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• autotldr@lemmings.world [bot] ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  This is the best summary I could come up with:

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  “I feel personal pride that no more children will be added to Omegle’s body count,” says the woman who successfully forced the infamous chat site to shut down.

  Speaking for the first time since the platform was taken offline, “Alice” or “A.M.” as she’s known in court documents, tells the BBC she demanded the website’s closure as part of an out-of-court settlement.

  Omegle’s popularity rose during the pandemic lockdowns in 2020, and was the subject of a BBC investigation which revealed that prepubescent boys were found to be explicitly touching themselves in front of strangers.

  On Friday, a week after Leif Brooks closed his chat service with a lengthy statement, he added a sentence at the bottom: “I thank A.M. for opening my eyes to the human cost of Omegle.”

  Cyber Correspondent Joe Tidy speaks exclusively with child abuse survivor “Alice” and her legal team, as they prepare a case that could have major consequences for social media companies.

  Alice’s case is a legal landmark, as most social media lawsuits in the US are dismissed under a catch-all protection law called Section 230, which exempts companies from being sued for things that users do on their platforms.

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  The original article contains 1,218 words, the summary contains 197 words. Saved 84%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!

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