What you need to know about the app and shutdown Omegle, the video and text chat site that paired strangers together to talk, ultimately shut down as part of a legal mediation with a female user who sued the company, claiming its defective and negligent design enabled her to be sexually abused through the site. Omegle’s chatting service was shut down Wednesday, just a week after it settled a court case with a plaintiff identified as A.M. Her lawsuit, filed in 2021, alleged that she met a man in his thirties on Omegle who forced her to take naked photos and videos over a three-year period. She was just 11 when it began in 2014. “The permanent shutdown of Omegle was a term negotiated between Omegle and our client in exchange for Omegle getting to avoid the impending jury trial verdict,” Carrie Goldberg, an attorney who represented A.M., tells WIRED. Attorneys for Omegle did not respond to a request for comment on the settlement. Emails to Omegle were not returned. Omegle, founded in...
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