Thomas Kovacs
Webmaster and Creative Artist
With the recent news concerning the shutdown of anonymous meetup platform Omegle, we take a moment to reflect on this interesting online service, draw some parallels to the downfall of Craigslist Personals and examine the future of anonymous meetup platforms.
I actually had not heard about Omegle until quite recently. The premise of the website was quite simple and the interface was super easy to use, two concepts which seem hard to pull off in today's over-engineered app centric world. There was the standard option for chat, but the more adventurous could select the video option as well, which was in fact more of what Omegle was known for.
Knowing the perils of random online video chat, the text chat option was usually the safer choice. Then, the system pairs the entrant with a completely random stranger and the conversation starts. The majority of the conversions that I experienced would usually start with "M?". After answering truthfully to such a non-starter question, there was usually a disconnect from the other side, which means the counterparty was not pleased with the answer.
At least those conversations did not waste any time. The more insidious ones would string you along with some interesting tale before requesting that you register at some seedy website to continue the AI generated conversation. Occasionally it was possible to strike up a good conversation or two with actual humans but the risk/reward ratio ended up being far too askew to justify the amount of time being spent on go-nowhere conversations.
So what can we learn about the demise of free-wheeling anonymous meetup platforms such as Craigslist Personals and Omegle? The most telling is that bad online behaviour on these aforementioned platforms, unlike in the real world, is seldom punished. All it takes is one bad apple to spoil the bunch, and these platforms are chock full of such apples. Without a sophisticated moderation system or cost-based economic platform to regulate such abuse, it will continue unchecked until the platform essentially chokes on itself.
With widespread abuse comes the lack of female participation in what becomes an increasingly hostile environment. Much like a real world sausage party that descends into barbarianism, these online platforms soon mirror their real-world equivalent without active female voices to soothe tensions, express alternate viewpoints and provide a sophisticated counter-balance to the testosterone fuelled keyboard jockey. It was not uncommon on Craigslist to have a female posted personal receive hundreds, if not thousands, of replies. And similarly for Omegle, the lack of active female presence contributed greatly to the demise of the platform.
Login systems which require an email address to ascertain the presence of a human have their uses. Granted, they require exchanging a piece of private information in exchange for the service, but the email address is public anyway and is still useful as an anonymous identifier especially if maintaining multiple addresses. With a proper user management system, there is the ability of the platform to exert more moderation for its users and integrate more controls into the service.
The most successful platforms all require a user system of some sort, and the fact that Craigslist Personals and Omegle were not able to provide one showed the limits of their ability to scale the service to meet the demands of the modern online world, which is much different than the one that existed earlier in the century and from which these platforms originated.
Today's user base and applications are much different, however. The rise of machines as well as social media has created toxic environments that can barely function even with identified participants. Reddit is probably the closest to what can be realistically achieved in terms of moderation vs. freedom of speech, even if the community is slightly off kilter. Yet monetary concern will ultimately drive the macro decision behaviour of such platforms, and as we recently experienced with the recent limitations imposed by Reddit on third party integrations, balancing an active community with corporate interests at hand is a delicate task indeed.
In conclusion, anonymity and freedom of expression needs to be balanced with safety of the participants as well as punishment for bad behaviour. Tipping the scales too far in one direction will result in the system being overly invasive, however too far in the other can result in the Wild West. We applaud platforms like Omegle for being the trailblazers that they were, but future online platforms that wish to circulate in the same vein need the spirit of the past as well as the demands of the present in order to create something sustainable and useful that can be appreciated by all.