Chatroulette Exposed - Russian Roulette Video Chat Site with Pervs Instead of Bullets in the Chamber   - 1 Comment

[Warning: The Chatroulette screenshots below, while altered by us to be not X-rated, are still graphic, and not safe for work ("NSFW") or for children to view.]

When you first arrive at the ChatRoulette.com home page (and the home page is about all there is, it’s all there front and center on the home page), you are presented with this attempt at a disclaimer:

- You have to be at least 16 years old to use our service
- Chatroulette does not tolerate broadcasting obscene, offending, pornographic material and we will have to block users who violate these rules from using our service
- Please use “Report inappropriate video” link to notify us about inappropriate content and we will take necessary steps

That’s it. You don’t even have to accept the ‘terms of service’, such as they are (heck, you don’t even have to read them), and you certainly don’t have to certify that you are over the age of 16 (and frankly you should have to be over the age of 21 to access this site), you just hit the control to turn on your camera, and away you go.

Perhaps the content, and the age requirement, are less surprising when you consider that Chatroulette was created and coded by a 17-year-old high school student. Andrey Ternovski (or Andre Ternovskiy, depending on with whom you are speaking), of Moscow, Russia set up Chatroulette, getting the idea, he says, from Skype video chats.

One can’t really expect a 17-year-old to limit his own service to people over 21, and given the loose controls on the site, it’s pretty clear that even the age 16 ‘requirement’ is barely even lip service (although you can find plenty of that on the site as well).

Despite how sleazy the ’service’ is (or perhaps because of it) Chatroulette is claimed to have been used by the likes of Nicole Richie, Perez Hilton, Paris Hilton, Kelly Osbourne and now, and only to research this article, yours truly.

Many people had never heard of Chatroulette until Jon Stewart exposed it (no pun intended) on the Daily Show earlier this month. During a segment of the March 4, 2010 Daily Show, Stewart purportedly went on Chatroulette.com live, although given the amount of naked body parts we saw just in skimming the offerings for this article, we rather doubt he would have gotten away with a truly live, un-time-delayed demonstration of Chatroulette on the air.

Although ChatRoulette only opened a few months ago, according to some news reports Ternovski has already received offers from Google and Skype for Chatroulette. If so, we can only imagine that it’s to get it off the web before it becomes a real nuisance, as it would take a good Google or Skype engineer less than a day to bang up a system better, and safer, than ChatRoulette.

Ok, again, these screenshots below are not safe for work (”NSFW”) and not safe for children to view.

(NOTE: The ONLY retouching we did to the below photos was to cover just enough to keep the images from being X-rated. We hope that you appreciate our artistic endeavours.)

When you first log into the ChatRoulette site, you are immediately presented with the double-barreled, over-under window. Your webcam, with you in it, appears on the bottom, and your chatees (”Partners”) video image appears on the top.

For most of our ChatRoulette session, we had a piece of crumpled foil over our webcam, which is what you see in the “You” section (the bottom window) of the ChatRoulette video windows here:

But just to prove that we really are on the site, with it all enabled, here is what I was fortifying myself with as I undertook this assignment:

Above the ChatRoulette video windows are three control buttons: Next, Report, and Pause.

If you tire of the person with whom you are chatting, or if for some reason you land on a dud, you can just hit the “Next” button. This is known as getting “nexted” if someone does it to you.

Somehow we doubt that the “Report” button gets used very often.

There is the occasional female body on Chatroulette (although they are in the clear minority):

There are, however, a lot of naked men.

Apparently this guy was happy to see me (censorship touchup provided by us):

And this one, well, this speaks for itself (censorship touchup provided by us here too):

We’re not going dignify the site by providing an outbound link here; if you really want to go to the Chatroulette site, you can do it yourself, by hand.