I'm not a fan of this journalist "ambushing" the founder at his property and staying outside of it until he gets some answers. "He has all the blinds closed" - right.
Let a judge determine whether the founder is in the wrong and needs to provide answers.
Sorry maybe it's the aspergers in me but I'm generally not a fan of these self-anointed judge, jury, and executioners performing public shaming rituals.
The legal process has played out. The Omegle founder has been faced with having to spend possibly hundreds of thousands in legal fees, and as such has decided to turn off the site without going to court.
The legal process playing out rarely ever means that a judge or jury makes a decision, rather it usually plays out as an economic problem, one of "does everyone involved have 10s of thousands of dollars to burn".
Usually the answer is "no", so usually it settles out of court.
> Sorry maybe it's the aspergers in me but I'm generally not a fan of these self-anointed judge, jury, and executioners performing public shaming rituals.
I'm starting to feel this is the thing we should have laws against.
This is a really important question for sure and I want to protect the rights of journalists, but in this instance the reporter from the BBC sat in front of Leif's house for 7 hours, fully aware that Leif was there and didn't want to speak to him, and then when he briefly emerged, accused him of not protecting children. It feels more like entrapment and harassment than reporting. It also feels like the type of theater the BBC knows they can get away with because the topic is child abuse and we seem to lose all restraint as a society when this topic comes up.
Under German law, anyone involved in a criminal case has the right to privacy. The press are free to report on the case, but they cannot identify the suspect or victim. If you watch or read German news, you'll see everything you expect to see in a report about a crime, except for names and faces.
Personally, I think this is an entirely reasonable balance between competing rights. Publicly identifying suspects can cause immense harm to innocent people and prejudice the right to a fair trial based on the presumption of innocence. I cannot see any public interest argument for the general right to publicly identify criminal suspects, beyond mere prurient interest. If there would be substantial investigative benefits to publicly naming a suspect, for example to encourage witnesses or other victims to come forward, that should be a decision for the courts (or at least the police) and that decision should be made based on the individual circumstances of the case.
Multi million Euro fraud, perpetrated for 10+ years in an organized fashion by husband and wife and some helpers from Saxony. Victims were (and are) senior citizens.
The German public broadcast MDR had several stories on them. Yet they don’t even dare to show the office building on which the perpetrators work. Much less their private house, or faces or names.
The press is more afraid of being sued by the perpetrators than the perpetrators are afraid of being prosecuted.
That really sucks; I would have guessed the standard of evidence would be lower than 'conviction of a crime'. Why a default judgment? And where do you live?
I don't think that's quite accurate. Aspergers was always a form of Austism, the remove of the separation is more policy than anything. The label is useful for those who want to use it.
So you’re a fan of judges doing their jobs, but not a fan of journalists doing theirs?
Tracking down and trying to talk to those your sources have accused of wrongdoing to try and get their side of the story and to get them to speak on the record is kind of literally Investigative Reporting 101, and has been for actual centuries now.
Investigative reporters should act professionally. They should setup a formal appointment with the accused and remain neutral. In the bbc report they showed up uninvited and asked "We want to know why you're not protecting children, Mr. Brooks" which is a loaded question [1].
That’s not actually a loaded question… they had a source with clear and convincing proof of the criminal victimization of numerous children by one of Mr. Brooks’s users who had weaponized the service he provided, as well as both law enforcement and child protection organizations indicating that Omegle’s service was being actively weaponized against children; as a matter of both rhetoric and law it was a foregone conclusion that Mr. Brooks was not protecting children, and there’s obvious public interest in his answer to that question. Arguably it’s something you could criticize as gotcha journalism, but that’s often a weak critique because you saying they’ve got an agenda is predicated on you having your own. Also there is a LONG history of very credible journalists tracking down and confronting those who don’t want light shone on their activities and therefore aren’t exactly inclined to schedule formal appointments… sure, it can be seen as showboating, especially for a television journalist, but it’s still just one of the tools of investigative journalism and you’d call it legit if it was exposing some form of public corruption or criminal activity that was beyond your personal pale.
I wouldn't ever call it legit for a journalist to chase someone around yelling questions at them and then use the footage, because it's the kind of thing that makes the "guest" look guilty regardless of actual guilt.
Showing up and getting actual answers, sure, but if you chased me around yelling questions about why I'm not protecting the children I would 100% run away rather than give you an in-depth interview. It looks bad until you think about it for five seconds and realise how confronting the situation is to even an innocent man, just like the Reid technique etc.
When judges do their job, you the accused have due process and legal representation.
I specified my issue (aspergers) for a reason. I would need legal and competent representation if I were accused of something.
We know from people that have actually consented to be in the public sphere (politicians, performers, etc) that even denying an accusation against you still leaves you a pariah with the scarlet letter, to be ostracized in some cases.
Smearing and destroying a person extra-judicially with no "burden of proof" to convict isn't something I'm okay with.
If there is legitimate wrongdoing of some kind, an investigation, carried out by the designated representatives (police, detectives, prosecutors) who are paid by our tax dollars and not by advertisers or the wealthy is what's preferable and actually representative.
> We know from people that have actually consented to be in the public sphere (politicians, performers, etc) that even denying an accusation against you still leaves you a pariah with the scarlet letter, to be ostracized in some cases.
Your actions as the officer of a company are generally considered to be "public".
You don't have a right to privacy over your business (you certainly don't have to answer questions from a journalist either, but they're not generally invading your privacy by merely asking them).
He wasn’t being accused of a criminal act, ergo he didn’t need legal representation on hand. He was being asked by a professional journalist for a world-renowned publishing source why he wasn’t doing more as the responsible officer to keep his company’s product from putting children into harms way in exactly the way his product was designed to perform… he had neither any right to avoid being questioned nor any real interest in avoiding providing comment. He might not like being approached, and if he has some condition that makes such in-person discussion difficult I’m certainly sympathetic but he could just as certainly have communicated by email as he had been asked to do, but chose not to.
As for the reputational risk you’re pointing to, nothing here was trying to cancel him, ostracize him, etc… the journalist was, I think rightly, trying to pressure him into changing his business’s product to prevent the very real harm that product has been, unquestionably, used to perpetrate. There is a very legitimate question why he wasn’t doing more to prevent his platform’s weaponization when his platform was pretty much by design ripe for exactly that use case.
It certainly is when you attempt to avoid making public comment over some matter to which the public has an overriding interest.
In terms of ethics, I’ll side with the journalist’s here over the guy running a service that randomly matches adults with children for video chat when he didn’t immediately shut down the service for a top-to-bottom rethink the moment he found out it’d been used by a serial pedophile.
There is no journalist here to side with unfortunately. Ethics are infringed upon whether the other party is responsible for worse violations or not. It's not an either-or situation.
You can't shut down everything once a bad actor does heinous things. There would be nothing left around. No more streets, no more cafes, no more trash bins, no more cars. Nothing.
As it has been pointed out, omegle did arguably provide more protection against bad actors that lots of other services around today. If you're in a situation you don't like, just press next and it's over. Nobody can contact you or recognise you in any way.
The crimes happen when you're not anonymous anymore, after exchanging snapchat or instagram accounts for example. They don't happen in a months long omegle conversation.
The root of the problem is being careless and providing identifying information. Obviously kids are too young to understand all the dangers, that's what parents are for. You wouldn't let your kids alone in the middle of the city and then sue it when a pedophile gets access to them. You can't let your kids use the Internet without keeping an eye on what is going on and warning them of the perils.
What happened to her is tragic. However, I don’t think warnings or age verification would change anything. Kids are going to do things regardless if there is a warning or age verification system.
I think the best thing we can do for our children is talk to them, and to start talking to them early.
You can do both. Not everyone will talk to their kids (lots of both useless and under resourced parents out there), and guardrails are possible, so best to not throw up our hands and say "welp, the world is just a terrible place."
"There is a cost" or "I don't want to" are not reasonable excuses, depending on use case and regulatory regime you're operating under. It sucks, but there are many terrible people out there. Hopefully the EFF and ACLU can work to balance out regulation from government in this space.
(what sites access is gated by age is a distinct conversation)
It's not "the world is just a terrible place", but rather "the world inevitably has things that kids cannot handle". If you want digital entertainment for your kids, then seek out products which explicitly offer this. The unfettered Internet is a less appropriate babysitter than a red light district.
And talking about "age verification" as if it's some straightforward addition is an utterly dishonest framing. The core idea of the distributed Internet is the barest of communication which further complexity/policy can be layered on top of. "Age verification" actually implies the much more draconian and chilling meatspace identity verification.
Nobody has a problem with a DigitalKidsPlayLand which performs identity verification, strictly curates/moderates content, and escrows all activity for later review. It's this push to legally require such things for everyone, based on some idea that everything needs to be made kid-safe, that is horribly authoritarian and needs to be soundly rejected.
Your own link talks about the many downsides, not least of which entrenching the idea that website owners regularly demand government id from their users. No possible downsides to that...
There are always tradeoffs. There is no law that says website owners cannot demand ID already. We might have different belief systems and perspectives on the topic of safety and privacy as it relates to non adults and Internet accessibility, in which case we won't find middle ground. It happens. Democracy is messy. I encourage engagement regardless of your position on the topic. That is how we find (or at least attempt to) the least worst policy.
> There is no law that says they have to, thankfully.
Eight states as of this comment have legislation that has passed requiring age verification. Ten other states have introduced legislation that has not yet passed. (US centric)
> In 2022, Louisiana passed a law requiring the use of age verification on websites that contain a “substantial portion” (33.33%) of adult content. Websites must utilize commercial age verification systems that check a user’s government identification or “public or private transactional data” to confirm that a user is at least 18 years old. Louisiana’s law has sparked a flurry of copycat legislation to be introduced in state houses around the country.
There is at least GDPR, if you have users of European citizenship, that requires a legal basis to do so if it is mandatory in your registration process
Basic age verification is pretty easy, no? I’m not sure about the details but this seems like a pretty low bar for a site like this. Not that I’m advocating it be required but just that if it were me I would not make something like this without at least making the best possible attempt at age verification.
Why wouldn't something based on unlinkable blind signatures work? Basically site issues a token to user, user gets token unlinkably blindly signed by some recognized age verification entity (government agency, bank) that already has their personal information, user returns signed token to site, site verifies it was signed by the recognized age verification entity.
What is the "best possible attempt"? There's was a checkbox added (possibly after this suit was filed) that was a "I'm over 18 and understand I'm meeting random people". That's something every teen already clicks past constantly to see increasingly large swathes of the internet. Any actual "verification" seems quite difficult beyond just relying on self-attestation.
> What is the "best possible attempt"? There's was a checkbox added (possibly after this suit was filed)
It was after the suit was filed (prior to the suit, AIUI, Omegle had an over-18 warning (with no confirmation) on the Unmoderated chat option, and a stated policy that users had to be 18+ or 13+ with parents permission.
Also, it may not have been because of this suit, there is at least one other suit that was found not to be barred by Section 230 (this one avoided S230 immunity because it is a product liability suit, not one contingent on their role as a publisher; the other one I've seen, IIRC, was found to raise a triable question of fact regarding whether Omegle's behavior was within the category of knowing involvement in trafficking that brought it out of S230 protection.)
It’s because the cops can show up and demand ID from everyone inside, they have to make sure everyone has one.
In this case, they have no obligation to ensure everyone has ID on their person.
Can you sue a bar you used fake ID to get into?
My real question wasn’t if there are kids on the system or not, but why are they allowed to sue when they themselves and nobody else have lied about the age verification question?
Yes, kids can and have sued because they got served alcohol while underage - even if they asked for it. The whole premise is as minor they couldn’t understand the consequences, and weren’t fully responsible for their actions.
And establishments get shut down all the time for it.
Your link from an ID verification company says “it depends” wrt fake id liability. I suppose there are sane places and crazy places in the world, for a limited time at least
Only if they ask for ID, check it, and it looks so good no one could tell it was fake. That’s about as far from checkbox in a random website pop up as we can get though, right?
In your new example:
- is there a regulatory reason that it is illegal for them to serve someone named Bob? Or is there a real risk/harm that people named Bob would suffer that they know about and is predictable?
- did they do any of the checks they are legally required to do to prevent someone named Bob from accessing the service and therefore suffering that injury? Or make a good faith effort to not just injure any Bob’s, at a minimum?
If they didn’t, then yet a Bob could sue if he managed to get through and get injured.
> As a young girl, Alice (not her real name) logged on to the popular live video chat website, Omegle, and was randomly paired with a paedophile, who coerced her into becoming a digital sex slave. Nearly 10 years later the young American is suing Omegle in a landmark case that could pave the way for a wave of lawsuits against other social platforms.
This is fucked. We shouldn't have to put safety padding on everything as a stand-in for something parents are supposed to do, ie. being responsible for their brood.
Should we put inflatable balloons around people because cars and high velocity objects exist that we can collide with?
Should we ban kitchen knives because they're sharp?
Asphyxiation is the leading method of teen suicide. Should we stop selling plastic, rope, and anything that fits around a neck and/or head?
If the pedo found her at a walmart, would she sue walmart too?
Weird people, pedos, criminals are everywhere.... parents somehow teach about "stranger-danger" offline but not online, and then blame platforms their kids use, even though they are too young to use them in the first place.
Walmart doesn't invite people of all ages to hang out in a private room together, with no supervision, no rules, no limits.
Parents tend to assume that "the internet" is regulated, somehow, whether by laws or market pressures. The thinking goes something like "Instagram is safe, right, because how could it not be? It's used by so many people, and if it could harm our kids, how would it be allowed to exist?" - right or wrong, people expect platforms to be held to some standard, and, right or wrong, put trust in the platforms to meet their expectations of safety.
The thing about Omegle was that it very much was the private room scenario I described above. I left out the part that made the room "safe" - the eject button. But persuasive people can persuade other people, especially children, to avoid that eject button, and while that only happened to some of the 74 million people using the site, it happened to people. And for those it happened to, those encounters wouldn't haven't happened without Omegle's help.
If you don't believe that, consider all those commenting here about how unique and special Omegle was for people who were good to one another. There's, thankfully, a lot of those comments.
But both things can be true, and were true when Omegle was operating. With 74 million people using it, the smallest of fractions of a percent still represent more than zero people experiencing harm that Omegle enabled.
The parents blame the platforms because the platforms enabled the harm.
>If the pedo found her at a walmart, would she sue walmart too?
Well, yes! A different example: with few exceptions (gun manufacturers), when people die everybody even remotely involved gets sued. Examples: Station Nightclub fire, Surfside condominium collapse..
In the case of a pedo at Walmart I could imagine: "Didn't the staff notice the guy dragging the girl out of the store? Why didn't they get involved?" Walmart has much more money than the pedo.
If you want a proper Walmart analogy then you should stick the child in a remote part of a vast parking lot, so that there's no reason to expect the staff to notice.
A more accurate analogy would be if they ushered the child into a backroom where a stranger was seated across from them with a glass divider between them and then they left the room. This is the whole point of Omeagle, to facilitate these interactions. Would it unsettle anyone if Walmart were doing that, and would they be legally responsible for whatever happens in there?
It's horrible that this happened and obviously I'm glad the pedophile is in jail, but how exactly was she "coerced"? And how is any of this Omegle's fault?
We can and do, and on the other side of a legal process, it may be found that Omegle is not at all liable for the actions of its users.
... and if the owner of Omegle doesn't want to take the years it'd take (and tens of thousands in legal fees) to find out whether or not they're liable for a silly project they put together for fun, I can't fault 'em.
This was the threat:
"Once he had coerced Alice into sending intimate images, Fordyce convinced her that she was complicit in making and sharing child sexual abuse material. Fearing arrest, she kept everything secret from her family and friends."
Punishing minors for "distributing child pornography" over content of themselves sent in private is completely outrageous. Had you not linked those sources there's no way I'd believe our justice system would be so absurdly inept.
If the guy was in another country, it's hard for me to imagine how she became a "digital sex slave" (how the article refers it) instead of just blocking the guy. Naturally I'd imagine there was some kind of blackmail for her to comply, but the article doesn't mention anything like that.
It's hard for you to imagine, and I'm going out on a bit of a limb here, because you're not a ten year old girl.
I've been the parent of a ten year old girl, and can say with confidence that it's within the realm of possibility that an adult could manipulate a child in ways that ultimately would make that child afraid, if not utterly terrified, to be disobedient.
You scraping and digging through the comments here imploring to know about how she was coerced suggests to me that what you're really looking for is a justification to blame the ten year old girl. "coercion implies a threat" implies that with no evidence of a threat, the girl must have played along. She must have liked it. That's the vibe you give as you dig in and keep demanding people prove there was a threat. I sincerely hope I'm wrong about that vibe.
I apologize that you felt that it was an accusation. I could have been more tactful in expressing what my impressions were of your probing. I'm happy to be wrong.
The blackmail was threatening her into thinking she'd be in legal trouble too. That's not true, but a terrified child isn't exactly running an optimal risk calculus. Even without that the content itself is blackmail material.
How was she coerced? Who knows. I'll take a guess and say she was probably tricked at first into thinking he was someone else. Threatened after that.
(EDIT: and for chrissakes get identifiable information out of your user profile if you're going to argue this hard about something like this! Internet 101, man!)
Asking for an explanation as to which part made it "coercion" means I "need a playbook for the sexual exploitation of children?" Wtf kind of leap of logic is that? The article didn't provide any explanation as to how it was coercion, hence the question, which you never answered.
So if I'm reading an article about a crime case and the article lacks details, that means I'm "looking for a playbook to commit that crime?" Give me a break.
Maybe you're a pedophile trying to hide your playbook for sexual exploitation of children? See how easy it is to make insulting, baseless accusations?
We do implement many things that protect people, sometimes children in particular. They aren't perfect, but they can prevent a lot of damage.
The question, as usual, isn't all or nothing. It's what can we do that will meet all the criteria as best possible: not infringe on freedoms, reduce harm, be affordable, etc.
100% agree i think the bigger issue is at least in the US and many other countries we have lost all faith that the people making those choices will do so in a responsible or ethical manner.
Essentially we lost faith in the system and I don’t think it will ever come back. So where do we go from here?
> Essentially we lost faith in the system and I don’t think it will ever come back. So where do we go from here?
A bit extreme? It will come back if you choose it, if you do it. The despair, as I posted, is trendy but it's absurd - the most ridiculous, counterproductive philosophical trend I can imagine. Stop philosophizing and just start doing!
I don’t think im being extreme. That is the way I see it. That is the way the various media outlets portray it. And that is the rhetoric that has taken over politics.
What should I do? I have no one I want to vote for and honestly I don’t care enough to do it myself. At this point it’s just figuring out how you can profit off this and get your own piece of land to check out on.
I don’t find this to be depressing it’s just what I see as facts.
We'd have to redefine depressing to exclude that post. Look at all the ways it advocates quitting; it's impressive in a way.
> That is the way the various media outlets portray it. And that is the rhetoric that has taken over politics.
Do you think that makes it true? That seems to support my claim that it's trendy, and people repeating these things because others say it are by definition following a trend.
I've seen many trends come and go, but this one - despair as a trend - is the dumbest.
Also, who is going to get anything done? We aren't children; our parents won't fix things if we don't do it. We'd better get to work, like prior generations who sacrificed and built so much. What will you tell your grandkids - 'well, I just quit; it was the fashionable thing to do.'
Have you considered this trend is encouraged by people who don't want you getting in their way? You are handing all your power to them.
> Should we put inflatable balloons around people because cars and high velocity objects exist that we can collide with?
You’re talking in hyperbole but… yeah, we do a ton of work to make roads safer than they might otherwise be. What purpose do you think pedestrian crossings serve?
> "Should we ban kitchen knives because they're sharp?"
We do in the UK: https://www.gov.uk/buying-carrying-knives "It’s illegal to: use any knife or weapon in a threatening way, carry most knives or any weapons in public without a ‘good reason’, sell most knives or any weapons to anyone under the age of 18." - And yes that includes kitchen knives because there's a callout - "In Scotland, you’re allowed to sell 16 and 17 year olds cutlery and kitchen knives."
> "Asphyxiation is the leading method of teen suicide. Should we stop selling plastic, rope, and anything that fits around a neck and/or head?"
We regulate them or have standards around them[3]: "The Toy Safety Directive, BS EN 71-1, raises attention to plastic bags and plastic sheets. It specifies bags larger than 380mm opening circumference and having a drawstring closure must be made of a material which is permeable to air. Except where application requires airtight sealing, all bags are to be perforated with holes of 4mm diameter minimum, spaced on 30mm grid. Bags for child appealing products and toys must have a minimum of four holes; other bags to have a minimum of two holes".
Your stance "we shouldn't have to do things about dangers" is silly, we do a lot of things to reduce risks in a lot of areas. Learning from other people's tragedies and trying to safeguard others from having to go through them is one of the long-running threads of civilised society.
Should we restrict electric wiring options in houses because electrocution and fires are a thing? Yes. Should we restrict food production options because salmonella is a thing? Yes. Should we have building codes because shoddy buildings fall down and kill people? Yes. Should we have laws about lead and carcinogens and things in products? Yes. Should cars have to meet crash test safety conditions? Yes. etc. etc.
> "Should we put inflatable balloons around people because cars and high velocity objects exist that we can collide with?"
We do; drivers are surrounded by inflatable airbags. [rant] Look at the social messaging around bike helmets. You never see people telling runners to wear a helmet in case they suddenly come upon a head injury. But take say YouTuber Tom Stanton who makes unusual engineering projects, including a flywheel bike[1] which he rode at walking pace down an empty country lane, and in his next bike video, a homemade supercapacitor bike[2] he's wearing a a helmet because of all the flack he got in the comments on the earlier one.
The point is not whether helmets prevent against brain damage in certain situations, the point is what situations are casual everyday recreational cyclists getting into where they risk brain damage? And the answer is cars. And the social messaging for helmet wearing is to shift blame from car drivers hitting cyclists to cyclists "not taking safety precautions".
Waiting outside someone's house for 7 hours, running after them, and spouting accusations through the door doesn't sound like my idea of "trying to have a civilized conversation". The BBC should be deeply embarrassed.
Is it this one instance, or is it the fact that it can connect children to adults? Or general moderation problems that include that? Or maybe attacks as in lawyers?
