Omegle has been shut down by the platform’s founder Leif Brooks after being cited in over 50 child abuse cases.
Omegle has been shut down.
The online video chat website was used to connect people in random calls with others from all over the world, using the names ‘You’ and ‘Stranger’, is closing after 14 years amid users claiming they were abused while using it.
The site – which grew massively in popularity under 18 users during the COVID-19 enforced lockdowns in 2020 – has been cited in more than 50 cases against paedophiles committing grooming and abuse crimes in the last several years.
Omegle founder Leif Brooks insisted the platform “no longer sustainable, financially nor psychologically”.
He said: “There can be no honest accounting of Omegle without acknowledging that some people misused it, including to commit unspeakably heinous crimes.
“As much as I wish circumstances were different, the stress and expense of this fight – coupled with the existing stress and expense of operating Omegle, and fighting its misuse – are simply too much.
“Frankly, I don’t want to have a heart attack in my 30s.”
When it debuted in 2009, Leif claimed the platform – which at the time of its demise had 73 million monthly visitors – as “the idea of ‘meeting new people’ distilled down to almost its platonic ideal” and made on what he viewed as the “the intrinsic safety benefits of the internet, users were anonymous to each other by default”.
Video-sharing platform TikTok prohibited links to Omegle being shared following a BBC investigation that unearthed two kids being groomed and instructed to carry out inappropriate acts by adults.
Omegle founder Leif Brooks closes down chat platform
