Panel urged to hold chat site Omegle liable for sexual exploitation of kids

Parents argue the website, which advertises itself as a place to talk to strangers, should be held responsible for its use by child predators.

The 11th Circuit heard arguments Thursday over whether anonymous chat website Omegle is liable for those who misuse the site to sexually exploit children.

In 2020, the parents of an 11-year-old girl filed suit against Omegle, a website which allows users to anonymously “talk to strangers” by randomly pairing them in one-on-one chat sessions.

According to the complaint, their child was put into a chat with an adult user who claimed to have access to her location and threatened to hack her computer if she did not comply with his demands to remove her clothing on camera. The user allegedly recorded the encounter.

Omegle is accused of knowing that its website is not only used by but also caters to child predators and profiting from the increased web traffic from so-called “cappers” who record their abusive conduct of children and share it online.

“There is nothing decent about this,” said James Marsh, an attorney representing the parents, during Thursday’s hearing in Montgomery, Alabama.

Marsh reminded the three-judge appellate panel that Congress intended for the 1996 law to help prevent minors from gaining access to sexually explicit materials on the internet.

After websites began to misuse the Communications Decency Act as a shield for their disregard to sex trafficking on their platforms, it was amended in 2018 to exclude immunity for “participation in a venture,” which it defines as “knowingly assisting, facilitating, or supporting sex trafficking.”

Marsh argued that Omegle engaged in such participation because users can utilize keywords to be matched with specific people such as minors, and that the site either intentionally or improperly allowed minors’ personal information to be leaked, including their geographic location.

But the attorney explained that because his clients’ case was dismissed before the discovery phase, they haven’t had the opportunity to fully uncover the extent of Omegle’s knowledge of child exploitation and the workings of the site’s algorithms and content moderation.