[throwaway290]

Twitter, Facebook, Gmail, Telegram, WhatsApp, Zoom and all those companies with UGC have this, responsible ones report it (Meta does lots, not sure Twitter does anymore, Telegram never did).

> I don't get how they can sue Omegle for this.

Take it as a sign that if tech community doesn't wake up and own up to this and try to solve the issue somehow then not just individual services but the entire idea of e2ee messaging is going to become illegal...

[joenot443]

Orders of magnitude more grooming and misconduct is done over SMS than was ever done over Omegle.

Is it up to telecom engineers to “wake up” and own that they’re facilitating this abuse? It seems like one of those finger pointing cases which falls apart when any level of scrutiny is applied.

[concordDance]

A large portion of commentators here greatly dislike the idea of unmonitored interactions between humans. Their ideal is that every person's cellphone continuously records nearby conversations and sends them to the police where they can run large language models to provide a shortlist of dangerous communications that a policeman can then look at and charge for.

[fkyoureadthedoc]

We all know this is not true, not even close. Read through the comments here, there's a clear overwhelming majority opinion blaming the family rather than the company. Even beyond this post, I've never seen this called for on this site.

You are in a clear majority position but still pretend to be persecuted and victimized by an imagined boogeyman.

[concordDance]

I agree I'm in the majority here on hackernews, but I'm also in the minority in my country (the UK) given the monitoring provisions now required by social media companies and where private communication of ideas between individuals is punishable[1].

[1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-67331657

[2devnull]

This thread is about what exactly?

[fkyoureadthedoc]

Several hundred Hackernews act incredulous about the Omegle shut down?

[2devnull]

If having as you claim support from the majority and yet they are still being shutdown, maybe their claim to unfair treatment from a coordinated opposition has some merit?

I had no view either way until reading this thread, and seeing that many adults used the site, which it seems did nothing illegal. Their greatest sin it seems was allowing humans to connect with one another. Something that’s increasingly seen as a danger that requires government intervention into.

If people could go back in time, we would never have public education because “it attracts predators and facilitates child victimization!”

See how stupid that is?

[nyx]

Ahh... I miss n-gate's webshit weekly. You know he'd have been all over this thread.

Omegle (business model: "Uber for child grooming")

[nottorp]

They probably couldn't afford to sue a mobile phone provider :)

But some ambulance chasing lawyer told them they have a chance to win in this case.

[throwaway290]

> Orders of magnitude more grooming and misconduct is done over SMS

Yeah, you should bring up snail mail next.

Even if we imagine someone using SMS in this day and age, still no one uses it to send photos or videos or broadcast live abuse.

> Is it up to telecom engineers to “wake up”

For better or worse a lot of what they do is considered essential service (calling emergency, disaster response etc).

e2ee messaging isn't essential, and yes ordinary non-tech people are waking up to harmful uses of it. If tech industry doesn't own up to that and work to combat those, someone else will and in that case rest assured you will not like the result:)

[buf]

I'm not sure exactly the tech community needs to own up to. Allowing an 11 year old who has irresponsible parents to use the internet?

Do tech companies need to verify government issued IDs to register new users?

[Tijdreiziger]

In some countries: yes.

https://www.wired.co.uk/article/gaming-china-crackdown

[master-lincoln]

That would be a reasonable solution if there would be any government who could provide a digital attestation scheme that allows to prove attributes without giving out the identity. Afaik it's possible technically. Just not wanted apparently

Like proving I am at least 18 years old without giving out my birth date or name.