Omegle ( ) was a free, web-based

online chat Online chat is any direct text-, audio- or video-based (webcams), one-on-one or one-to-many ( group) chat (formally also known as synchronous conferencing), using tools such as instant messengers, Internet Relay Chat (IRC), talkers and possi ...

service that allowed users to socialize with others without the need to

register Register or registration may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Music * Register (music), the relative "height" or range of a note, melody, part, instrument, etc. * ''Register'', a 2017 album by Travis Miller * Registration (organ), ...

. The service randomly paired users in one-on-one chat sessions where they could chat anonymously. It operated from 2009 to 2023.

History

The site was created by then-18-year-old Leif K-Brooks of

Brattleboro, Vermont Brattleboro (), originally Brattleborough, is a New England town, town in Windham County, Vermont, United States, located about north of the Massachusetts state line at the confluence of Vermont's West River (Vermont), West River and the Connec ...

and was launched in March 2009. Less than a month after launch, Omegle garnered around 150,000 page views per day. In March 2010, the site introduced a

videotelephony Videotelephony (also known as videoconferencing or video calling) is the use of audio signal, audio and video for simultaneous two-way communication. Today, videotelephony is widespread. There are many terms to refer to videotelephony. ''Vide ...

feature. In 2022, the rules were updated so that only those 18 or older were allowed to use the website. Omegle criticized the

Chinese Communist Party The Communist Party of China (CPC), also translated into English as Chinese Communist Party (CCP), is the founding and One-party state, sole ruling party of the People's Republic of China (PRC). Founded in 1921, the CCP emerged victorious in the ...

, expressed support for the 2019–20 Hong Kong protests, and added an image of the American flag on the front page with the words "

Xi Jinping Xi Jinping, pronounced (born 15 June 1953) is a Chinese politician who has been the general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and Chairman of the Central Military Commission (China), chairman of the Central Military Commission ...

sure looks like Winnie-the-Pooh" over it.

Closure

At the time of its closure, Omegle faced a $22 million lawsuit, which was filed in 2019 by a teenager from

Oregon Oregon ( , ) is a U.S. state, state in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States. It is a part of the Western U.S., with the Columbia River delineating much of Oregon's northern boundary with Washington (state), Washington, while t ...

who became a victim of child sex exploitation. In 2014, the then-11-year-old plaintiff encountered a Canadian pedophile on Omegle, who blackmailed her into digital sexual slavery. The lawsuit alleged that Omegle knowingly allowed the pairing of minors with pedophiles due to a splash screen warning that stated, "Predators have been known to use Omegle, so please be careful". Omegle removed this warning at a later date. The

BBC The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is a British public service broadcaster headquartered at Broadcasting House in London, England. Originally established in 1922 as the British Broadcasting Company, it evolved into its current sta ...

published an extensive report on the role of a lawsuit and out-of-court settlement that resulted in shutting down the site. The plaintiff, referred by the initials as "A.M.", was mentioned in the Omegle's final site message saying, "I thank A.M. for opening my eyes to the human cost of Omegle." This acknowledgment and a link to the lawsuit was part of the site's settlement agreement. On November 8, 2023, K-Brooks posted an announcement describing the challenges of running the site and the ultimate decision to shut down the website. Challenges listed included online exploitation of children and attacks on communication services. K-Brooks concluded that his decision revolved around internet misuse and asked users to consider donating to the

Electronic Frontier Foundation The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is an American international non-profit digital rights group based in San Francisco, California. It was founded in 1990 to promote Internet civil liberties. It provides funds for legal defense in court, ...

to support internet users' digital rights. The

lead Lead () is a chemical element; it has Chemical symbol, symbol Pb (from Latin ) and atomic number 82. It is a Heavy metal (elements), heavy metal that is density, denser than most common materials. Lead is Mohs scale, soft and Ductility, malleabl ...

of the announcement began with quotes by

C. S. Lewis Clive Staples Lewis (29 November 1898 – 22 November 1963) was a British writer, literary scholar and Anglican lay theologian. He held academic positions in English literature at both Magdalen College, Oxford (1925–1954), and Magdalen ...

and Douglas Adams.

Etymology

Brooks said, "I was working on a different project before Omegle, and it kept breaking due to an error from a third-party service it used. The error code wasn't documented, and I wanted a name for it, so I nicknamed it 'error code omega' because it was apocalyptic. Omegle was eventually named after that."

Controversies

Racism amongst some users

During the

COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic (also known as the coronavirus pandemic and COVID pandemic), caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), began with an disease outbreak, outbreak of COVID-19 in Wuhan, China, in December ...

, Omegle was used by many

alt-right The alt-right (abbreviated from alternative right) is a Far-right politics, far-right, White nationalism, white nationalist movement. A largely Internet activism, online phenomenon, the alt-right originated in the United States during the late ...

users for

racist Racism is the belief that groups of humans possess different behavioral traits corresponding to inherited attributes and can be divided based on the superiority of one Race (human categorization), race or ethnicity over another. It may also me ...

content, in which users harassed

ethnic minorities The term "minority group" has different meanings, depending on the context. According to common usage, it can be defined simply as a group in society with the least number of individuals, or less than half of a population. Usually a minority g ...

and women with

hate speech Hate speech is a term with varied meaning and has no single, consistent definition. It is defined by the ''Cambridge Dictionary'' as "public speech that expresses hate or encourages violence towards a person or group based on something such as ...

. In 2020, two teenagers used the keywords " BLM", " KKK" and "racist" to match with users, reporting that many of their matches made racist remarks. In 2020,

TikTok TikTok, known in mainland China and Hong Kong as Douyin (), is a social media and Short-form content, short-form online video platform owned by Chinese Internet company ByteDance. It hosts user-submitted videos, which may range in duration f ...

user Johan Bradley posted a video of two teenage boys referring to him as a "

nigger In the English language, ''nigger'' is a racial slur directed at black people. Starting in the 1990s, references to ''nigger'' have been increasingly replaced by the euphemistic contraction , notably in cases where ''nigger'' is Use–menti ...

" and "

slave Slavery is the ownership of a person as property, especially in regards to their labour. Slavery typically involves compulsory work, with the slave's location of work and residence dictated by the party that holds them in bondage. Enslavemen ...

" while making whipping noises. The Omegle users were identified as students of Shoreham-Wading River High School, prompting their district's superintendent to launch disciplinary action against them. In 2020, the Anti-Defamation League began an investigation into

antisemitism Antisemitism or Jew-hatred is hostility to, prejudice towards, or discrimination against Jews. A person who harbours it is called an antisemite. Whether antisemitism is considered a form of racism depends on the school of thought. Antisemi ...

and

far-right Far-right politics, often termed right-wing extremism, encompasses a range of ideologies that are marked by ultraconservatism, authoritarianism, ultranationalism, and nativism. This political spectrum situates itself on the far end of the ...

trolling In slang, a troll is a person who posts deliberately offensive or provocative messages online (such as in social media, a newsgroup, a internet forum, forum, a chat room, an Multiplayer video game, online video game) or who performs similar be ...

on Omegle. An Australian

white supremacist White supremacy is the belief that white people are superior to those of other races. The belief favors the maintenance and defense of any power and privilege held by white people. White supremacy has roots in the now-discredited doctrine ...

and former

YouTuber A YouTuber is a content creator and social media influencer who uploads or creates videos on the online video-sharing website YouTube, typically posting to their personal YouTube channel. The term was first used in the English language in 2006 ...

named Tor Brookes (who used the alias Philip Hedley on Omegle but is more generally known as " CatboyKami") popularised the site in far-right circles after he attended a "

Stop the Steal After Democratic nominee Joe Biden won the 2020 United States presidential election, Republican nominee and then-incumbent president Donald Trump pursued an unprecedented effort to overturn the election, with support from his campaign, ...

" rally in

Phoenix, Arizona Phoenix ( ) is the List of capitals in the United States, capital and List of cities and towns in Arizona#List of cities and towns, most populous city of the U.S. state of Arizona. With over 1.6 million residents at the 2020 census, it is the ...

. He has promoted

conspiracy theories A conspiracy theory is an explanation for an event or situation that asserts the existence of a conspiracy (generally by powerful sinister groups, often political in motivation), when other explanations are more probable.Additional sources: * ...

and far-right extremism on Omegle, as well as on BitChute,

Discord Discord is an instant messaging and Voice over IP, VoIP social platform which allows communication through Voice over IP, voice calls, Videotelephony, video calls, text messaging, and digital media, media. Communication can be private or take ...

, and

Telegram Telegraphy is the long-distance transmission of messages where the sender uses symbolic codes, known to the recipient, rather than a physical exchange of an object bearing the message. Thus flag semaphore is a method of telegraphy, whereas pi ...

, such as a video of him mimicking the

murder of George Floyd On May 25, 2020, George Floyd, a 46-year-old Black American man, was murdered in Minneapolis by Derek Chauvin, a 44-year-old White police officer. Floyd had been arrested after a store clerk reported that he made a purchase using a c ...

. His content includes racial slurs and costumes (including

blackface Blackface is the practice of performers using burned cork, shoe polish, or theatrical makeup to portray a caricature of black people on stage or in entertainment. Scholarship on the origins or definition of blackface vary with some taking a glo ...

) to mock other ethnic groups. Other prominent white supremacists that used Omegle included American Paul Miller, who used the alias GypsyCrusader and dressed as the comic book villains Joker and

Riddler The Riddler (Edward Nigma, later Edward Nygma or Edward Nashton) is a supervillain appearing in American comic books published by DC Comics. The character was created by Bill Finger and Dick Sprang, and debuted in ''Detective Comics'' #140 in O ...

to spread racist messages, and Canadian Brandon Martinez, who would enter interests associated with the Democratic Party to harass

leftist Left-wing politics describes the range of political ideologies that support and seek to achieve social equality and egalitarianism, often in opposition to social hierarchy either as a whole or of certain social hierarchies. Left-wing politi ...

users.

Child sexual abuse

In 2010, K-Brooks expressed disappointment over sexual content on the site. While video chats were monitored to flag the IP addresses of users that showed nudity or sexual content, Omegle did not have a

broadcast delay In radio and television, broadcast delay is an intentional delay when broadcasting live material, technically referred to as a deferred live. Such a delay may be to prevent mistakes or unacceptable content from being broadcast. Longer delays las ...

to prevent minors from viewing harmful material at the beginning of a chat. Prior to early 2013, the site did not censor contributions through a profanity filter, and users often encountered

nudity Nudity is the state of being in which a human is without clothing. While estimates vary, for the first 90,000 years of pre-history, anatomically modern humans were naked, having lost their body hair, living in hospitable climates, and not ...

and sexual content. A former user who was a child at the time reported, after it closed, her experiences with the site, saying "So. Many. Penises." and mentioning people self-harming. Originally, 13-year-olds could use the website with the permission of a parent or guardian. Many local and state law enforcement agencies warned of increasing sexual exploitation of minors when Omegle's popularity surged, particularly with teenagers, during the

COVID-19 lockdowns During the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, a number of Non-pharmaceutical intervention (epidemiology), non-pharmaceutical interventions, particularly lockdowns (encompassing stay-at-home orders, curfews, quarantines, and similar socie ...

. In 2020, a Canadian teacher was arrested at his home in

Guelph Guelph ( ; 2021 Canadian Census population 143,740) is a city in Southwestern Ontario, Canada. Known as The Royal City, it is roughly east of Kitchener, Ontario, Kitchener and west of Downtown Toronto, at the intersection of Ontario Highway 6, ...

after he broadcast child pornography on Omegle. He pleaded guilty to several criminal charges in 2022. In 2021, an Australian man was arrested at his home on the Central Coast of

New South Wales New South Wales (commonly abbreviated as NSW) is a States and territories of Australia, state on the Eastern states of Australia, east coast of :Australia. It borders Queensland to the north, Victoria (state), Victoria to the south, and South ...

after he allegedly used Omegle to advertise his search for child sex.

References

{{Authority control Chat websites Internet properties established in 2009 Online obscenity controversies Internet properties disestablished in 2023 Defunct American websites 2009 establishments in the United States 2023 disestablishments in the United States