Popular online chat website Omegle shuts down
The popular anonymous chat website Omegle has shut down amid claims it connected unsuspecting children with paedophiles.
The popular online chat website Omegle, which paired random strangers for video calls and chats, has shut down after its founder admitted it enabled “heinous crimes”.
The free site, which launched in 2009, randomly paired users to chat anonymously in one-on-one sessions. If users no longer wished to talk to their match, they could simply end the chat and immediately be transferred to someone new.
Omegle claimed to connect strangers with “cool people” online, but its darker side hid in plain sight.
Omegle announced its shutdown on Wednesday, sharing an image of a tombstone to mark its death along with a lengthy statement.
Founder Leif K-Brooks said it had become too difficult to fight misuse of the platform, amid hoards of complaints that it was being used by predators to connect with and abuse children.
“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 recognise each other’s shared humanity,” he said.
“One aspect of this has been a constant barrage of attacks on communication services, Omegle included, based on the behaviour of a malicious subset of users.”
Child abuse, paedophilia claims on Omegle
Prior to being shut down, the website had around 73 million visitors a month, mostly from India, the US, the UK, Mexico and Australia, per the BBC.
Social media users described the news as the “end of an era”, reminiscing on nights spent surfing Omegle at childhood sleepovers. But the site’s popularity among children, paired with its anonymous and randomised features, made for disturbing instances of abuse.
The site has been mentioned in more than 50 cases against paedophiles in countries including the UK, US and Australia, according to the BBC.
In just two hours on the site, the publication claimed to be connected at random with 12 masturbating men, eight naked males and seven porn adverts, as well as “dozens of under-18”, some of whom “appeared to be as young as seven or eight”.
In 2022 in Australia, a Umina man was found guilty of procuring and abusing a child on Omegle. In another landmark case that threatens to change the way social media companies are regulated in the US, a young woman accused the site of randomly pairing her with a paedophile who abused her for three years.
Mr K-Brooks acknowledged the claims of abuse that have plagued the platform, but said Omegle had implemented “reasonable measures to fight crime and other misuse”.
“There can be no honest accounting of Omegle without acknowledging that some people misused it, including to commit unspeakably heinous crimes,” he wrote.
Mr K-Brooks described the stress of running a platform under pressure.
“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,” he wrote.
“Operating Omegle is no longer sustainable, financially nor psychologically.
“Frankly, I don’t want to have a heart attack in my 30s.”
He thanked users who accessed the site for positive reasons and contributed to its success.
“I’m so sorry I couldn’t keep fighting for you,” the statement finished.
Originally published as Popular online chat website Omegle shuts down
