- Tubefilter
- Posts
- RIP Omegle. We'll miss the memes.
TOGETHER WITH
It’s Tuesday and Threads is learning the art of letting go. Thanks to a new update, users can now delete their Threads accounts without saying goodbye to their Instagram followers.
EXITING THE CHAT
Omegle’s founder is saying goodbye to the site after admitting it was used to “commit unspeakably heinous crimes”
Omegle is closing its doors. Since launching in 2009, the chat site has generated countless memes and viral YouTube videos—but it’s also been tied to more than 50 legal cases across multiple countries (per BBC News).
Omegle’s dark side has a lot to do with its emphasis on anonymity.
The site was designed to connect two people at random for text and video chats. That format produced plenty of viral content, but for over a decade, it lacked one crucial safeguard: age verification. By the time Omegle added something resembling that safety feature in 2022 (a checkbox that asked users to confirm they were over 18), the service was already rife with child abuse. According to a judge involved in a recent lawsuit against the site, Omegle’s anonymity-focused format made it directly culpable for those crimes.
After attempting to dismiss a $22 million lawsuit from a woman who said the site matched her with a now-convicted child predator when she was eleven years old, Omegle eventually settled. Now, the site’s founder says “the stress and expense of this fight—coupled with the existing stress and expense of operating Omegle, and fighting its misuse—are simply too much.”
“There can be no honest accounting of Omegle without acknowledging that some people misused it, including to commit unspeakably heinous crimes. From the bottom of my heart, thank you to everyone who used Omegle for positive purposes, and to everyone who contributed to the site’s success in any way.”
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What would you do with funding from Spotter?
There’s no time like the present to find out. With Spotter’s fast-paced funding process, you could receive capital this week—and begin revolutionizing your channel.
HEADLINES IN BRIEF 📰
More than 100 U.K. TikTok users have joined forces to protest the app after a creator it repeatedly promoted was convicted of rape. (Tubefilter)
Amazon’s latest round of layoffs will reportedly affect roughly 180 employees. (VentureBeat)
Threads users can now opt out if they want to keep their content from being cross-promoted on other platforms. (Engadget)
According to Netflix exec Leanne Loombe, the streamer plans to launch titles “across mobile and TV and PC through the cloud” as it expands its gaming enterprise. (The Verge)
DATA • MILLIONAIRES 📈
This creator’s first video scored 6 views. Now, YouTube is his full-time career.
Austin John had a good thing going as a DJ. He was a regular performer on New York City Radio and Music Choice Television, and was doing over 100 weddings a year. Then he got early access to Pokémon Sun and Moon.
As a longtime Pokémon fan, Austin was thrilled—and he couldn’t wait to share his newfound knowledge of Sun and Moon with other players. The creator already knew the basics of video making from his years in music production, so he decided to make a quick YouTube tutorial.
That first video got a whopping 6 views.
Austin was undeterred. After all, he wasn’t aiming to build a huge following or go viral; he just wanted to share information about one of his favorite games. But by the time the creator’s third Pokémon tutorial went up, it was clear that fans wanted more. Austin was happy to oblige: for two years, he juggled his career in music with a growing YouTube channel.
That schedule was only sustainable for so long. In 2018, Austin decided it was time to stop taking on new DJing gigs. It was perfect timing: “within the first four weeks of Pokémon Sword and Shield,” Austin says, he “went from 840,000 subscribers to 1.2 mil.”
Austin’s channel reached a major high in June. Data from Gospel Stats.
That was four years ago. Nowadays, Austin is a full-time content creator with 2.5 million subscribers—and an ever-growing library of viral gaming tutorials and guides. Find out more about his YouTube journey here.
IT’S COMPLICATED
Twitch is saying goodbye to Hype Chat after just five months
Hype Chat is less than six months old, but the short-lived monetization tool is already being discontinued. Twitch announced its plans to “deprecate” Hype Chat earlier this week, through an update added to the top of its original announcement post.
The reason for Hype Chat’s demise: mass confusion.
Unlike Cheering (a chat-boosting feature that uses Bits as its currency), Hype Chat allowed channel subscribers to pay monetary amounts ranging from $1-$500 in order to pin their messages to the top of the chat window. That monetization model came with the added benefit of a 70/30 revenue split for creators. But, according to Twitch, it also “made it more difficult to understand how much streamers were earning after currency conversion.”
“From experiments we ran prior to launch, we believed that Hype Chat offered an easier way for viewers to support streamers…However, we learned through community feedback after the launch that viewers saw more value in Cheering because it was easier to understand exactly how much streamers earned from Bits.”
To solve that problem, Twitch plans to use the discontinuation of Hype Chat as an opportunity to invest more heavily in alternative revenue streams—including both Cheering and Bits. Here’s hoping the platform comes up with a few other monetization options along the way, too.
LISTEN UP 🎙️
Pokimane is breaking into the podcast game (but don’t tell anyone)
Twitch‘s top-followed female streamer is embarking on her next adventure. On the heels of launching her own food brand (aka Myna Snacks), Pokimane has announced the upcoming release of a weekly podcast.
According to that announcement video and the show’s new trailer, Don’t Tell Anyone will follow its illustrious host as she offers “honest and unfiltered” advice to listeners and reveals her “hottest takes and most embarrassing secrets.”
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Today's newsletter is from: Emily Burton, Sam Gutelle, and Josh Cohen. Drew Baldwin helped edit, too. It's a team effort.