Omegle, a website that paired strangers together via video chat, was shut down on Nov. 8, 2023, 14 years after its creation.
A female user, claiming that the site neglected to cease sexual harassment which led her to be paired with a child predator, filed a lawsuit in 2021, which recently caused it to shutdown.
Omegle’s founder, Leif K-Brooks, released a lengthy statement regarding the shutdown on the Omegle website.
“There can be no honest accounting of Omegle without acknowledging that some people misused it, including to commit unspeakably heinous crimes,” K-Brooks wrote.
Sophomore Lara Carlson used the Omegle website but said she wasn’t pleased with the environment it provided its users.
“I only went on the Omegle website because my friends always wanted to go on it,” Carlson said. “But, I didn’t like it because of the amount of weird things I would see.”
Carlson mentioned how she personally experienced predatory behavior and the effects it had on her, calling it “traumatizing.”
“I met a lot of people like old men, people my age, but there were mostly girls and we would have random conversations about anything,” Carlson said.
Junior Andrew Alden had similar experiences and met a similar range of people.
“There’s a lot of old men on the website. We all know why,” Alden said.
Alden explained that he had an uneasy feeling about the website, much like Carlson and other Omegle users.
“I felt very threatened about it, very uncomfortable,” Alden said.
The lawsuit was filed due to repetitive predatory behavior and eventually led to the shutdown of Omegle.
2024-01-30