Chatroulette Hasn't Solved Its Porn Problem

When Chatroulette.com went offline last week, promising to return in new and improved form, many observers assumed the random video chat site was working on a way to fix the issue that has dogged it from the start: The tendency of its users to expose themselves, driving away both advertisers and anyone not interested in watching strangers take their pleasure.

Apparently not. Chatroulette version 2.0 went live sometime Monday morning. The interface is a little cleaner, but the video feeds themselves certainly aren't. A brief session produced a slew of not-safe-for-work encounters.

So much for those reports that the site's creator, Andrey Ternovskiy, was looking to add software that could automatically block anyone who engaged in what he has euphemistically termed "inappropriate" acts. Nor has he implemented any sort of age-verification to back up its requirement that users be 17 or older.

But perhaps that's still to come? As of now, the site is still buggy and slow to load, suggesting the relaunch is far from complete.

http://xml.channel.aol.com/xmlpublisher/fetch.v2.xml?option=expand_relative_urls&dataUrlNodes=uiConfig,feedConfig,localizationConfig,entry&id=841961&pid=841960&uts=1267137123

http://www.aolcdn.com/ke/media_gallery/v1/ke_media_gallery_wrapper.swf

The Faces of Chatroulette

Randomized video-chat web site, Chatroulette.com, allows users from across the globe to watch one another, to chat or to share their special skills. Some interactions are entertaining. Others are just plain bizarre.

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Paul Sakuma, AP