things from suicide attempts it gets
pretty bad on here it definitely should
not be a sight that should be up
it's bad it's bad well
hi the website omagal has been linking
up random strangers for video chats
for years but since the pandemic began
it's exploded in popularity worldwide
fueled by viral videos on mainstream
social networks
on tick tock alone there are now more
than nine billion views
of videos about omegal it's a site that
claims to be moderated
but has a reputation for being
unpredictable and unsafe
i've been on it for 10 minutes
and i've probably seen like
20 guys you know men pleasuring
themselves is
a common occurrence in one two-hour
period during our bbc investigation we
were paired at random
with 12 masturbating men eight naked
males and seven porn adverts
the site has no age verification in
place and we found dozens of under 18s
some children as young as seven or eight
and it's not just
adults doing explicit things when we
search for chats using a generic sexual
keyword
we were also paired twice with seemingly
prepubescent boys
masturbating one of them identified
himself as 14 years old
we ended both chats swiftly and reported
the incidents to the relevant
authorities
but the internet watch foundation a
charity working to eliminate child
sexual abuse imagery online
says it's concerned it says the site is
being used by predators to gather
self-generated
child abuse material we do see content
that's been generated
uh on the website omegle the content
that we see
quite shockingly ranges right through to
individuals self-penetrating
on webcam and this type of activity is
going on in a household
often where we know that parents are
present because there are conversations
that you can hear you know even children
being you know asked to come down for
tea
one parent in the north of england told
us that her eight-year-old daughter was
nearly coerced into sexual activity on
the site
last month my daughter had seen some
videos go viral on tick tock
about people being on amigos so
she explored the site these people were
coming on and saying she was beautiful
hot sexy she told them that she was only
eight years old
and they were okay with that she
witnessed a man masturbating
and another man wanted to play truth or
dare
she thought it was just an innocent game
but he was asking her to
shake a bum take a top off in a trousers
which thankfully she didn't do in recent
months police forces schools and cyber
authorities around the world
have issued warnings against omegle but
the website continues to surge in
popularity
in the last year traffic has ballooned
from 34 million visits
to an estimated 65 million visits a
month
the site's grown particularly in the us
uk india
and mexico lily and her friend who was
on face time with her are 16 years old
yeah she said one in 10 conversations is
actually normal she reckons
where did we hear about it tick tock
yeah through tic toc
yeah it was a few months ago our friends
started using it and then we
started just using it for like funny
like but there's weird men
on that yeah loads of them tick tock
says its safety teams are continuing to
monitor omegle content on their platform
and have not found any offensive or
illegal material the company also said
that as a result of our investigation
it's banned any direct web links to the
website
we tried to speak to omagal but there's
no way to contact the website
leafke brooks who's based in the us
created the site when he was 18
and is still the owner so we tried to
track him down he has no
active social network accounts and it
took several attempts
through a separate company he founded
called octane ai
to get a response he said in an email
that omegal is moderated
and in fact he's increased moderation in
the last year removing users who appear
to be under 13 years old
but many of the people we spoke to on
the site say that it's not moderated
enough
uh this is not a platform this students
or children should be here
there should be some moderator out there
keeping an eye on everyone
mr brooks also claims to have removed
the ability to search for the generic
sexual keyword
we used we weren't able to verify this
and he didn't reply to any follow-up
questions
i have met quite a few really nice
people on here but
for a site that's so low managed and not
really monitored
it really shouldn't be up
you