Omegle creator explains shut down: ‘what is right doesn’t always prevail’

Omegle was closed on Wednesday evening. Leif Brooks’ site, created to allow people video chat with random online strangers, had a bad reputation almost since its launch. The website, which has been plagued by controversy over the years due to reports of sexual abuse and discrimination against minors, was marred with controversy. Citing increased scrutiny of the website, K-Brooks said that operating Omegle “was no longer sustainable, financially nor psychologically,” in a message on the site.

Omegle is a familiar name to those who have grown up with the Internet. It was one of the most popular websites on the internet, outlasting other sites like MySpace in public consciousness. According to K-Brooks’ statement about the closure, the website reached “millions of daily users” at one point. This volume of interactions made Omegle the origin of internet humor. Moments captured during Omegle chats have been the foundation for jokes and memes for many years.

Omegle is more to K-Brooks than a traffic or meme giant. Omegle, which he launched at 18 years of age, was the ideal platform for him to connect with others. “If you didn’t want to talk to a particular person, for whatever reason, you could simply end the chat and — if desired — move onto another chat with someone else. It was the idea of ‘meeting new people’ distilled down to almost its platonic ideal,” he wrote.

The founder stressed that he tried to implement “reasonable measures” to combat misuse of the platform and that the employees at the website worked with law enforcement to “help put evildoers in prison where they belong.” But he admits, in a bit of palpable exhaustion, “the fight against crime isn’t one that can ever truly be won.”

In reflecting on Omegle’s closure, K-Brooks’ musing takes the shape of a treatise on the state of the internet and the way we address crime. K-Brooks ends her essay with a passionate plea for digital spaces such as Omegle to be preserved.

I’ve done my best to weather the attacks, with the interests of Omegle’s users – and the broader principle – in mind. If something as simple as meeting random new people is forbidden, what’s next? This is not a compromise that I would consider reasonable. Analogies are a limited tool, but a physical-world analogy might be shutting down Central Park because crime occurs there – or perhaps more provocatively, destroying the universe because it contains evil. We cannot have a healthy and free society if we fear each other so much.

Unfortunately, what is right doesn’t always prevail. 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. Omegle cannot be sustained, either financially or psychologically. Frankly, I don’t want to have a heart attack in my 30s.

Omegle’s closure is effective immediately. In his sign off, K-Brooks urged his users to donate to the Electronic Frontier Foundation before stepping away on a down note: “I’m so sorry I couldn’t keep fighting for you.”