Omegle, a random video chat site that began with the ideal of connecting strangers but one that’s also long been accused of enabling sexual predators, has ceased operations, according to its founder, Leif K-Brooks.
In a lengthy farewell message, K-Brooks said the website he founded in 2009 aspired to a “platonic ideal” of allowing people to share ideas and form new relationships. But he also admitted that his creation had a darker side.
“There can be no honest accounting of Omegle without acknowledging that some people misused it, including to commit unspeakably heinous crimes,” he said.
Those crimes resulted in numerous claims against Omegle. In one high-profile case, a young woman sued the website in 2021, accusing it of matching her in a chat when she was 11 years old with a man who sexually exploited her.
The young woman, identified only as A.M., sought $22 million in damages in her lawsuit. Omegle was shut down days after the two sides agreed to settle the lawsuit.
Messages to Omegle, K-Brooks and his attorneys were not returned before this story published.
When contacted by NPR, the woman’s attorney, Carrie Goldberg, declined to offer a response, saying the legal team would “let the shutdown speak for itself!”
Here’s a brief guide to the controversial site and its demise:
Omegle came to life 14 years ago
K-Brooks says he founded Omegle as an 18-year-old who was then living with his parents in Vermont. Its tagline was “Talk to Strangers!”
Omegle offered to pair people from around the world in text chats (and, a year after launching, through video). It quickly caught on as an internet novelty — and a venue for men to make unwanted sexual advances. Most troubling, the site was also known to pair underage kids with adults.
K-Brooks incorporated Omegle in Oregon, where he lived from 2010-2014. He had recently been operating the site out of Florida. And while his farewell note suggested he had people working as moderators, a statement provided to the Oregon court where A.M. filed suit suggested that if anyone other than K-Brooks monitored and/or moderated the site, they did so as volunteers.
“I have been Omegle’s sole employee since its inception,” K-Brooks said in court documents filed this summer.
For either a sole proprietor or a team, moderation of the site would be onerous, as Omegle’s website has long drawn intense interest and thrives on quickly made pairings. Earlier this year, it drew more than 70 million visits in a month.
Omegle and similar sites have weathered legal challenges by invoking free-speech immunity conferred by Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. The statute has traditionally given broad protections to online companies deemed to be “interactive computer services” from liability related to their users’ words and actions, labeling them platforms rather than publishers.
In 2018, the law was modified to help prosecutors and civil lawsuits target online sex traffickers for “knowingly assisting, supporting or facilitating” crimes. The change prompted Craigslist to remove personal ads in the U.S.
