Nov 9, 2023 at 3:58 PM Update: an hour ago
Video chat service Omegle has been taken offline by its owner because the online platform was being abused by some users. The service randomly paired users together for a video call.
Canadian Leif K-Brooks founded the website at the age of eighteen with the idea of meeting people on the Internet “the way you would meet someone on the street”. But according to the founder, the website was also used by people who committed “indescribably gruesome acts” there.
Partly for this reason, according to him, it is “financially and psychologically” not possible to keep the website running. “I don’t want to have a heart attack in my 30s,” he wrote on the Omegle website.
During the corona crisis, the chat site gained popularity worldwide, especially among children and young adults. Concerns about the website increased in the Netherlands and several other countries and people warned against chatting with strangers.
Earlier this year, journalists made the BBC Omegle is known to be mentioned in dozens of cases of possible child abuse, including in the United Kingdom, the United States and Australia. The website had approximately 73 million visitors worldwide every month.
Beeld: Getty Images
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2023-11-09 14:58:41
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