Chat Roulette Puts Teens Face To Face With Strangers, Pornography - Boston News Story - WCVB Boston
I thought after our discussion in class about voyeurism on the internet, it was funny that my mom sent me a link to a story that she saw on the news the night before about ChatRoulette.
The site was created by a Russian high school student about four months ago and has become very popular among college kids. Some argue that it is just fun, but many people worry about the content that is on the site. Even though the site asks for an age verification it does not insure that you are actually above the age of 16.
I kind of related this website to that of many other social networking sites in that you can meet people randomly and if you really don't like them you can press the next button to see who comes up next. The scariest thing about this website is that many people use it for their own sick pleasures. Men pleasuring themselves via web cam is very popular. There is really no regulation for the site and even though these people could potentially be committing a sex crime they will rarely see punishment.
It is a sex crime when children are involved and this is where the biggest problem is. Like Ive talked about a few times, the law and the internet have not caught up with each other. I was interested to see if there was anyone out there who enjoys site like this or if anyone has had experience with ChatRoulette. Have you guys encountered explicit content via this website? Is this type of technology making it easier to snoop into others lives? Are people just interested in making friends or do sites like this turn into pornography?
Below is a video from rocketboom.com showing people how to use ChatRoulette.
Saturday, April 24, 2010
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
I do not think sites like this can be used to make friends, or even strike up an interesting and beneficial conversation. I mean, the site seems to be full of teenagers playing around on the web and perverts trying to expose themselves. The invention of this site seems like a good one, but its just another example of how people can take a good idea and turn it into something negative.
ReplyDeleteThis site could have had potential, but like Brittni said the users have really made it into a type of sick joke. If the protocal for how to use the site changed, specifically if there was some way to regulate the exposure, the site could actually be beneficial or even fun, however the fact that one needs to go online to talk to random people via webcam is also a sad sign of the times. These people who actually want to use the site in for forming relationships seem ridiculously lonely.
ReplyDeleteI agree with the both of you.... even with all of the technology to keep kids safe sites like this expose them to vast amounts of perverts.... why cant people just make friends the old fashioned way
ReplyDeleteI agree with everything that was said above. I tried chatroulette with a friend of mine once to see what it was all about and it was so disturbing to see 1. how incredibly inappropriate some of the users were and 2. how young some of the kids were on there. Although the whole idea of the website seemed fun, there is no way I will be going on there again.
ReplyDelete