Chatroulette

←Back • ↑Topics • ↑Categories

Chatroulette

Chatroulette official logo [1] Type Online chat, video chat, voice chat Launch Date November, 2009 Status active Product Line product Platform platform Website www.chatroulette.com

Chatroulette is a video-conferencing website that connects strangers from around the globe via web cameras and chat rooms. A user is randomly paired with another user, and three actions can be taken: click "next", video chat, or text chat. The "next" button ends the current connection and pairs the user up with a new person. Users can continue clicking "next" to shuffle through different users until they are satisfied with their pairing. The "video chat" button allows the user to communicate with the randomly paired user with via video. The "text chat" allows the user to communicate with the user they are paired with via instant message. Both the video and text chats are able to be implemented at the same time.

The chat rooms allow people to interact however they please. There are no censors or filters to inhibit people from being vulgar or offensive. Notoriously, this ability leads to extreme voyeurism, 'public' nudity, and sexual acts. As a result, Chatroulette is categorized as a not safe for work (NSFW) site. This voyeurism and anonymity leads to many ethical implications.

History

Andrey Ternovskiy, founder of Chatroulette

Chatroulette was first launched as "Head-to-Head.org" on November 2009 by a 17-year-old high school student in Moscow, Russia named Andrey Ternovskiy. The inspiration for Chatroulette came from the various video chats Ternovskiy had with his friends on the Skype platform. Ternovskiy's friends didn't like the site, so he advertised on forums. People started to use it, but Ternovskiy did not think the name was right. After watching a scene from The Deer Hunter that depicted prisoners of war being forced to play Russian roulette, he decided on the websites current name. He then bought the Chatroulette domain for $7.

Ternovsky ran the site from his bedroom, working alongside four programmers who worked virtually. The site's main source of income came through advertising links to an online dating service.

One of the first things that garnered popularity for the site was a Brazilian soccer posting a notice inviting like-minded people to talk about the sport on Chatroulette. Hundreds of people logged on, and at that point, made up about 50% of the website's user-base. However, instead of the original intent of talking about the sport online, "they took off their clothes".

Chatroulette has also influenced the media. In particular, the 2012 movie Smiley was based around a serial killer who frequented a site very similar to Chatroulette.

Statistics

When the site first launched in November 2009, Chatroulette registered approximately 500 visitors per day. One month later, this number had jumped to 50,000. By the beginning of March, Chatroulette boasted a user-base of approximately 1.5 million users. 33% of them were from the United States and 5% from Germany.

Demographics

Piechart by Gender

• In a study done by Tech Crunch done in March 2010, approximately 50% of all Chatroulette spins resulted in connecting a user with someone in the USA. The next most likely country was France at 15%.
• The study also indicated that on average in sessions with only one person in the frame, 89% of users were male while only 11% were female.
• Only 8% of the spins showed multiple people in the webcam frame, and the likelihood of females appearing in a group was 1 in 3, but for males was 1 in 12.
• Female prevalence on Chatroulette is so low that a user is more likely to be paired with a session in which no one is in the frame than in a session with only one female.
• Additionally, 1 in 8 chat sessions were found to have objectionable content. Frames with objectionable content were further broken down to study the "pervert rate" by country, with the United Kingdom outranking other countries with a "pervert concentration" of 22%.
• Around 90% of users are under the age of 30.
• Younger users view Chatroulette as a platform to be "mischievous" while maintaining relative anonymity.

Ben Folds and Chatroulette

Ben Folds, a singer-songwriter known for his talent as a pianist, implemented Chatroulette into a concert in North Carolina in May 2010. . A prior video of an amazing hooded pianist on the site whom many thought to be Folds sparked the musician to make his own video. The video features both Folds' screen and his multiple encounters with Chatroulette users. The video of Folds using Chatroulette grew to be so popular that he later did the same for other concerts .

Online Chat Websites

Screenshot of a Chatroulette session

Many other online chat websites exist that allow users to communicate in different ways including instant messaging, voice chat, and video chat.

• 6rounds is a cross-platform social media platform allowing users to chat, collaborate and even play games in real-time. It is currently available to the web, Android and iOS platform.
• FaceTime is an app made by Apple Inc., intended for mobile phones with a forward-facing camera.
• Omegle allows users to communicate with strangers without registering and offers a mobile application that lets users chat with strangers from a cellular device. Spy Mode, connects three strangers where one stranger asks a question and the other two answer or discuss. Omegle also allows visitors to use Facebook Connect in order to meet strangers with common interests.
• OoVoo allows users to easily group videochat with several other people. Communication via text messages is also available.
• Tinychat is similar to Chatroulette but also allows users to create their own virtual chat room on any topic. A person can choose to chat in multiple rooms at once.
• Skype is an application that allows users to communicate via video and text. It has been implemented into Facebook's interface.
• Tokbox allows users to implement their API onto the users' own website in order to add video and group chat.
• Zumbl is a social media website where users can anonymously chat with other users. Users can then tag each other with personality tags they felt resembled others during their conversation. Zumbl won the Samsung Innovation Award 2012.

Ethical Issues

Screenshot of a Chatroulette session

Integrity

Since Chatroulette doesn't require user registration, there has been a lot of criticism surrounding the web-conferencing site. The site has developed a reputation for the sometimes lewd images in chat sessions, and is often a platform for "cyber sex". This especially has drawn a lot of attention in the media, due to the lack of enforcement on age restrictions. In CNET news, an article warns parents to be wary of Chatroulette's alarming images and indecent exposure.

Censorship

Sam Anderson, a writer for New York Magazine, refers to Chatroulette as "chaotic and untamed", and describes how some people he encountered on the site shamelessly engaged in sexual acts on camera, some displayed obscene images, and one even showed a picture of a man who hung himself. Due to the fact that the site is uncensored, users never know what images they may come across, which could result in various negative consequences, including embarrassment, emotional damage, and exposure to mature images at a young age. Minors can even be exposed to damaging images and information on the site, as the lack of supervision, censorship or filters allow age restricted material to be represented freely. Parents have been warned of the dangers of Chatroulette and that "it is the last place they should want their kids to be." It has even been called "a predators paradise."

Chatroulette's attempts to improve

Because of all the negative attention surrounding the site's pornographic content, Chatroulette has responded by encouraging users to be at least 18 years old, and stating that the site prohibits "pornographic" behavior. Users can also report other users for behavior that offends them. If that user gets three complaints, the user is temporarily banned from using the site. In an effort to further combat this problem, Chatroulette also tried applying an algorithm that screened users who violated their video chat policies, in addition to creating a Safe Mode feature. However, in August 2012, the company took down the Safe Mode feature, and instead explicitly stated in their terms and conditions that nudity is not allowed on the site. There is now a pop-up window explaining these new rules to users of the site.

See Also

• Cybersex
• Cyberculture
• Pornography
• Social Networking Services

External Links

• Chatroulette's Official Website