The Collapse of Free and Anonymous

When Leif K-Brooks shut down Omegle on November 8, 2023, he wrote that “operating Omegle is no longer sustainable, financially nor psychologically,” describing both the crushing moderation burden and the human cost of trying to keep the service from being weaponized. His farewell message ended with an unusually blunt line: “Frankly, I don’t want to have a heart attack in my 30s.”

The closure came after Omegle reached a settlement in a lawsuit brought by a woman identified as A.M., who alleged she was 11 when Omegle repeatedly connected her with a sexual predator. In her suit, she sought $22 million in damages.

Omegle’s death represents more than one platform’s failure; it signals the bankruptcy of an entire business model. Free, ad-supported services that connect strangers in live video cannot reliably cover the cost of modern trust-and-safety operations, especially when those costs are increasingly shaped by regulation, court scrutiny, and escalating legal exposure.

And the demand didn’t disappear. It scattered. In the post-Omegle ecosystem, users flow toward a long tail of “roulette” alternatives, sites that keep the core mechanic (instant, one-click stranger matching) but experiment with new economics, new guardrails, and new positioning. That long tail ranges from general-purpose clones to more niche variants that segment audiences and expectations. In that mix, the random chat on JerkRoulette or the live cam streams on OnlyFans are examples of how the roulette mechanic persists even as platforms experiment with different boundaries, gating, and monetization strategies.

The Rising Cost of Compliance

Canada’s Bill S-209, introduced for first reading on May 28, 2025, crystallizes the new economics of online safety. The bill would make it an offense for an organization, for commercial purposes, to make pornographic material available on the internet to someone under 18, unless the organization has implemented a prescribed age-verification or age-estimation method.

The penalties are substantial: up to $250,000 for a first offense and $500,000 for subsequent offenses.

The bill also creates a pathway to court-ordered access restrictions: an enforcement authority can apply to the Federal Court for an order requiring internet service providers to prevent access to the material in Canada if an organization fails to comply after notice.

And it explicitly acknowledges collateral blocking: a court order may end up preventing access to non-pornographic material from the same organization, and it may block pornographic material even for adults, if the court finds it necessary to ensure minors can’t access it.

This is what platform operators increasingly experience as a “safety tax”: the cost of proving users are adults (or otherwise eligible) before granting access. Even if verification prices vary widely by vendor, method, and volume, the basic arithmetic is unforgiving for businesses that monetize in fractions of a cent per impression. If the cost to safely serve (and legally defend) a user exceeds the revenue that user generates, the model doesn’t bend, it breaks.

Omegle’s trajectory shows the scale of the problem. In 2022, there were 608,601 reports of child exploitation involving Omegle made to NCMEC’s CyberTipline, according to reporting that cited NCMEC-tracked data.

K-Brooks also stated in court documents that he had been Omegle’s sole employee since inception, an extreme cost-minimization structure that still couldn’t outpace the modern safety burden.

When Familiar Technology Meets New Economics

The technology behind random video chat isn’t new. What’s new is the economic environment it has to survive in.

Consider Rabbit Video Chat. It presents itself as a random video chat service and emphasizes quick access and privacy-forward language typical of roulette-style sites.

Platforms like this illustrate the post-Omegle shift: the same low-friction mechanic is still widely distributed, but sustainability increasingly depends on whether a service can fund moderation, compliance, and risk management in a world where regulators and courts are far less tolerant of “we tried our best.”

That tension pushes platforms toward one of a few outcomes:

• Gate access (age assurance / verification, identity checks, restricted regions)
• Shift monetization (subscriptions, paid tiers, higher-value sessions)
• Consolidate into larger operators that can amortize compliance costs
• Or exit markets where the regulatory exposure is too expensive to carry

A parallel example is the UK, where Ofcom published guidance on effective age checks in January 2025 and set expectations that pornography services implement age assurance by July 2025.

Whether one agrees with the policy goals or not, the market effect is predictable: the compliance floor rises, and smaller or low-margin services feel it first.

The Economics of High-Margin Survival

This brings us to an uncomfortable truth: parts of the adult internet are structurally better positioned to survive the new safety economy than much of the ad-supported social web, because the unit economics are simply different.

OnlyFans is the cleanest illustration. The platform takes 20% of creator earnings. In 2023, reporting on Fenix International’s accounts described $6.6 billion paid to creators, revenue of over $1.3 billion, and pre-tax profits around $657 million.

When revenue per user is measured in dollars instead of fractions of a cent, robust trust-and-safety and compliance programs become a business expense rather than an existential threat. High-margin platforms can fund age-gating systems, moderation teams, legal support, and monitoring infrastructure, while still remaining profitable.

That doesn’t mean adult platforms automatically do this well or perfectly. It means they are more likely to be able to afford doing it, especially as the regulatory baseline tightens.

The Gated Future

A fundamental transformation is underway: from an internet where access was presumed to one where access must be proven.

The benefits are real. Regulations like Canada’s Bill S-209 (if enacted) aim to reduce minors’ exposure to harmful content, and the bill explicitly centers age verification/estimation as a required protective measure.

But the costs are tangible too. The spontaneous, low-friction discovery that defined the early web becomes harder when every doorway requires a check. Innovation at the margins becomes difficult when compliance demands systems, vendors, policies, and legal readiness, things that typically require scale.

The platforms that thrive tend to be either:

• Mainstream giants with diversified revenue and compliance machinery, or
• High-margin services where users directly fund the ecosystem

What gets squeezed is the “missing middle”: niche, experimental, community-driven products that aren’t big enough to amortize compliance, but also aren’t monetized enough to pay for it.

The Price We’re Willing to Pay

For Canada’s digital economy, Bill S-209 forces a direct question: if safety requires verification, and verification carries real cost and complexity, who gets to be safe?

One likely outcome is stratification:

• Premium, gated platforms offering verified, moderated environments
• Free platforms either disappearing, becoming heavily restricted, or relocating to lighter-regulation jurisdictions
• A smaller, less spontaneous web, safer in certain ways, but also less open and harder to build on

That trade-off, openness versus protection, experimentation versus safety, won’t be resolved by rhetoric. It will be resolved by what societies mandate and what business models can sustain.