Goodbye Strangers: The Collapse of Omegle from Legal Troubles

By: Sarah Wejman

Edited by: isabel niemer and Ananya Chag

When 18-year-old Leif K-Brooks founded Omegle in March of 2009, he hoped for it to serve as a medium between people of all backgrounds from around the world. Being from a small town, he explained that he always loved using online forums to expand the knowledge of both himself and others through his love for the Internet. Just recently on Nov. 8, 2023, K-Brooks announced that Omegle would no longer exist. While the premise of Omegle, an online chat site that randomly matches a user with a stranger, was beloved by many, it was abused to the point that K-Brooks had to shut down the site completely.

Like many other social media and live streaming sites, Omegle provided “an online hunting ground” for sexual predators to find targets, and the pandemic increased the number of heinous acts committed.[1] In fact, in the last two years alone, Omegle has been mentioned in over 50 cases against pedophiles.[2] One landmark case has received particularly high coverage and involves the horrific story of a woman who was sexually abused online through Omegle for three years. Under the name Alice, or A.M, she anonymously shared her story of being forced to send explicit images and videos of herself from ages 11 to 15 to a Canadian man named Ryan Scott Fordyce.[3] Fordyce threatened to release pictures of her if she told others about any of this. In an interview, Alice explained that she was also “sent back, in a sense, to recruit more [underage girls] as if it was a cult.”[4]

In the lawsuit, A.M v. Omegle.com, 3:21-cv-01674-MO (2022), Alice claims that the nature of Omegle is dangerous and proper safeguards were not implemented. For example, Alice argues that Omegle should not have allowed children and adult men to be connected in the first place.[5] In total, Alice brought eight claims against Omegle including “product liability arising out of defects in design,” negligence from lack of warning about the platform’s dangers, and facilitating sex and human trafficking. Omegle attempted to claim Section 230 immunity for some of the claims, which essentially provides immunity for online platforms against claims regarding comments and messages contributed by their users.”[6] Section 230 protects platforms from being legally punished when users exercise their First Amendment rights to speech. However, platforms are not exempt if the content “violates federal criminal law, intellectual property rights, or a few other categories of legal obligations.”[7] Omegle argues that the plaintiff is shifting the blame from Fordyce to them, thus they are still justly entitled to Section 230 immunity. However, Judge Mosman of the U.S. District Court for the District of Oregon determined that Omegle did not receive such protections. He reasoned although the fact the chats and videos were exchanged as third-party content, that was not the issue at hand. Rather, the real issue was Omegle’s lack of warning signs about potentially dangerous interactions. The Court determined this entailed a product liability case because of the nature of Omegle’s unregulated chats: children and sexual predators shouldn’t be matched in the first place, but the product allows for this.

In his Omegle farewell statement, K-Brooks expresses that he has “done [his] best to weather the attacks, with the interests of Omegle’s users...in mind.”[8] In his concluding paragraph, he states that “[t]he battle for Omegle has been lost, but the war against the Internet rages on.”[9] He fears that many online platforms will soon fall due to the inability to prevent predators and malicious Internet-goers from plaguing their sites. In this disheartening reality, K-Brooks thinks our Internet interactions will be more like a “souped-up version of TV,” meaning there is little room for live human interactions to occur.[10] A.M v Omegle.com is one of many past and future cases of its kind, and K-Brooks’ evaluation is likely correct at least in part. This issue presents a challenging ethical and legal dilemma: how do we preserve First Amendment rights –a founding liberty of the U.S. that receives ample legal protection and value– for law-abiding citizens, while still protecting vulnerable individuals from the abundant and appalling dangers of the Internet? Although a solution is not clear, a good starting place may be to continue speaking with victims. Having a majority who has never been abused over the Internet and who lack proper exposure to a variety of real-life testimonies on the matter would not be an adequate solution. But allowing those whose lives were affected because safety protocols failed to do their job would certainly be a step in the right direction.

Notes

1. Eric Lagatta, “Anonymous Video Chat Service Omegle Shuts Down, Founder Cites ‘Unspeakably Heinous Crimes,’” USA Today, November 9, 2023, https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2023/11/09/omegle-shuts-down-leif-k-brooks-state ment/71514658007/.

2. Annabelle Liang and Joe Tidy, “Omegle Shut Down: Video Chat Website Closed after Abuse Claims,” BBC News, November 9, 2023, https://www.bbc.com/news/business-67364634.

3. Bill Chappell, “Video Chat Site Omegle Shuts down after 14 Years — and an Abuse Victim’s Lawsuit,” NPR, November 9, 2023, https://www.npr.org/2023/11/09/1211807851/omegle-shut-down-leif-k-brooks.

4. Liang and Tidy, “Omegle Shut Down.”

5. A.M v. Omegle.com, 3:21-cv-01674-MO (2022).

6. Communications Decency Act, 47 U.S. Code § 230 (1996)

7. Jennifer Stisa Granick, “Is This the End of the Internet as We Know It?” American Civil Liberties Union, February 22, 2023, https://www.aclu.org/news/free-speech/section-230-is-this-the-end-of-the-internet-as-we-know-it#:~:text=While%20Section%20230%20immunizes%20onlin

8. Leif K-Brooks, “Dear Strangers,” November 8, 2023. https://www.omegle.com/.

9. K-Brooks, “Dear Strangers.”

10. K-Brooks, “Dear Strangers.”

Bibliography

A.M v. Omegle.com, 3:21-cv-01674-MO (2022).

Chappell, Bill. “Video Chat Site Omegle Shuts down after 14 Years — and an Abuse Victim’s Lawsuit.” NPR, November 9, 2023. https://www.npr.org/2023/11/09/1211807851/omegle-shut-down-leif-k-brooks.

Granick, Jennifer Stisa. “Is This the End of the Internet as We Know It?” American Civil Liberties Union, February 22, 2023. https://www.aclu.org/news/free-speech/section-230-is-this-the-end-of-the-internet-as-we- know-it#:~:text=While%20Section%20230%20immunizes%20online.

K-Brooks, Leif. “Dear Strangers.” Omegle, November 8, 2023. https://www.omegle.com/. 

Lagatta, Eric. “Anonymous Video Chat Service Omegle Shuts Down, Founder Cites ‘Unspeakably Heinous Crimes.’” USA Today, November 9, 2023. https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2023/11/09/omegle-shuts-down-leif-k-brooks-state ment/71514658007/.

Liang, Annabelle, and Joe Tidy. “Omegle Shut Down: Video Chat Website Closed after Abuse Claims.” BBC News, November 9, 2023, https://www.bbc.com/news/business-67364634.