[patron psa] we have to switch the master we serve (Patreon)

I (the one who codes) want to explain the ongoing situation to the people who support the Patreon for the project you may know as the Videochat Extension.

Our project was supposed to be the client-side arm of the Russian grassroots random-video-chat internet culture commonly known as Chatroulette. Random video-chat culture originated in Moscow in 2010, omegle was the U.S. player that stayed true to its nonprofit nature.

Omegle was the non-commercial pioneer of random text chat with strangers that popularized the video format during COVID. We were working toward capturing Omegle from the inside by competing with other client-side projects and building a cool custom web client for it, just for fun.

We had a significant impact on OmeTV’s success as a server, but none on its failures.

OmeTV is a very old Ukrainian clone of Chatroulette, known as Chatruletka in the Russian market. We initially supported its content creation since 2021, although we had little impact. Later, we managed to replace Omegle’s main logistical hub for advanced users. We used it to support OmeTV’s expansion into the U.S. market by retaining those users on the platform in 2024, rather than developing something ourselves, such as saving the original site—with up to 600,000 advanced web users we were able to reach in nov 2023 through links to other modders of the original. After OmeTV expanded its web presence by adding Google login and obstructing our original project cause of it, we leveraged our community, traffic, and influence to bootstrap a new third-party pirate website in the niche—Uhmegle/Umingle—instead of simply snitching on OmeTV’s fragile apps or building something independently from scratch.

The core issue was the fear of competing with OmeTV, as they had valuable but fragile mobile apps that we would have had to draw attention to in order to ensure fair competition.

Basically, the entire purpose of the Patreon was to sustain that particular operation, which has now concluded. If the new owner of Omegle goes after Uhmegle/Umingle, the dispute would probably be resolved quickly by any reasonable judge. If not, it’s just another Omegle clone preventing OmeTV from implementing a countdown to a permanent ban to create FOMO during the usual bs ban waves. In any case, OmeTV has already won because Omegle’s afterlife was determined by a project literally named in russian 'Expansion for Chatruletka.'

All the money made from cringe slow skips on umingle technically belongs to China no matter how the site is called. No new or old IPs managed to steal our niche we kept free while it was still possible. OmeTV is an independent monopoly in this kinda nonprofit niche. People in the US adapted to using new type of Omegle, which now requires an account; only big corporations are real competitors, and they are far behind. It’s an incredible win that we’re being cockblocked from sharing because people didn’t vote for Poroshenko or Grudinin for that matter, Im not good at understanding the politics of societies that feel alien to me.

The current version of the browser extension you see in the Chrome Web Store was never intended to be used on OmeTV or in any hostile environment. There was a brief period when we tried to have it published as the brain of a custom browser in the microsoft store, but OmeTV’s screw-ups got in the way. Self-distribution felt stupid and unnecessary, as it caused friction and the limited browser approach required significant resources for zero gain.

That’s why the extension is difficult to use and install. We aren’t designing anything for OmeTV as part of this particular project; it’s a dead end, and we moved past it a long time ago. A workaround that relies on a custom flag—even for basic functionality—was removed from Chrome in 2025 due to security concerns about malware abusing it. Who the fuck needs a Chrome extension that doesn’t work in Chrome?

People operating ome stepped on a mine that was not designed with them in mind but we disarmed it by doubling down on our support of their mobile op. Simply giving Omegle users the ability to record all OmeTV conversations felt like a recipe for disaster at the time.

We also have a custom client that we’re confident can scale to millions of users. It was intended to take over the entire web after Omegle.com was expected to return. However, due to the unexpected crisis surrounding OmeTV, the auction was boring, the new omegle is a disappointment. We’re currently considering whether releasing it is justified, even though OmeTV remains the biggest player in the us market—a position we essentially handed to them.

Our client is equivalent to a nuke. Although its ability to cause real harm is limited now, there is practically no real harm left to inflict, and its the only way for us to evolve the client.

The likelihood that we would somehow trade years of influence for a small portion of its proceeds is low, especially since the platform in question is Ukrainian and built its capital by facilitating online communication within Russian society. Meanwhile, the people on the client side of that capital—who successfully expanded Chatruletka on the U.S. market but have not meaningfully communicated with Russian society since 2014—are likely seen as the ones pressing the buttons that launch explosive projectiles at the country that stole Chatroulette from Russians in the early 2010s. xDDD

If that was the case in 2024, who knows what the fuck is in their heads in 2026—or what will be in 2028, 2030? And whos to blame them?

And what are we supposed to do now? Serve omegle instead?

So, several bad things have happened along the process.

1. Russia invaded Ukraine in an extremely reckless way, turning a failed blitzkrieg into a brutal war of attrition with a profoundly negative impact on many people directly affiliated with OmeTV. For most people around our project, this war is a distant conflict between groups with which we do not identify. I distanced myself from Russian society after 2014, despite being able to integrate into it on extremely favorable terms and, as a descendant of Polish nationalists who were kinda exiled there, I have no strong positive feelings toward either Russian or Ukrainian people with weapons and ideas resolving around using them. That said, I understand that the unjust war gives people living comfortable lives in Western countries—comfort likely funded by my life choices, which I’m not entirely sure I regret—a convenient reason to undermine our project, though not all of them have immigrated afaik. It is extremely difficult to leave Ukraine even for people with resources, one of my pals got caught :c. Instead of providing us with some form of compensation so that we could separate on good terms, the server that was hiding a large PDF file in the App Store began attacking the client that was in the process of migrating Omegle to OmeTV, without any prior communication. That killed the vibe. What were we supposed to do—restart Omegle ourselves and take a huge share of the market without any ability to monetize it? OmeTV controlled the apps, but this crazy competitive advantage could have been fixed with a single phone call. By that time, we were already Omegle - not an extension used by some creators on OmeTV. Nobody knows what the fuck those people were expecting, given that the people operating a large communication platform didn’t know how to communicate. We’ve had to improvise to continue acting in the best interests of our culture’s capital, bypassing the chaotic headquarters that essentially gave us a choice between this option and killing their apps and restarting Omegle from scratch—without ANY prior communication between parties. We basically had to double down on our support for OmeTV in this game of thrones.

2. A red phone that should have been answered in one place was answered somewhere else, and Apple changed its guidelines in a way that effectively said, “Fuck OmeTV,” because their mobile platform was seen as being abused as a front for this controversial internet culture. Omegle shut down for a reason. The whole essence of OmeTV’s success was its ability to replace Omegle in the App Store after Omegle was removed due to obvious concerns. OmeTV is now blacklisted in the App Store too, which destroyed the main reason we felt obligated to support it in the first place. Hundreds of similar apps with years of history were also wiped out, while larger corporations were forced to change their products, destroying much of their original appeal. By then, we had already completed most of the critical processes for switching Omegle and OmeTV, and it had all been for nothing. A large portion of the capital we served just disappeared due to the incompetence (?) of those responsible for managing it.

Android was saved, but google removed 'Dont be evil' from its mission statement a long time ago... OmeTV still has 500K people online, but losing iOS would be a huge loss of quality over time...

Basically, what you’re seeing is a half-broken project. In reality, our operation has effectively killed Omegle twice, and whether there will be a third time remains uncertain, since it depends on China that reboots the original website without random text chat. Who the fuck knows what they're up to? We have also undermined the ambitions of many people with old and new IPs by sustaining a proxy-based, pirate content-creation network through our influence in the original community. The funniest (and quite expensive) prank in the history of the internet.

The result is that the market leader remains independent, but in a chaotic, unpredictable, and undesirable way of hostile independence.

We convinced a lot of the advanced users of the original website that the new pirate site was their future, and they chose it themselves—or at least that is how it appeared. Those people communicate with each other through omegle clones and spread the disease. We did this to clear a path for an operation we considered to be an ally that, during that transfer, began identifying itself as Ukrainian and lost much of both the Russian and American (as in segments of the internet) random-video-chat communities’ accumulated capital likely over a fucked-up communication. It’s a disturbing pattern with obvious communication issues.

The most damaging part was completely ignoring a regulatory body from Australia that was demanding answers about why their children were still being allowed to use Omegle in 2025. They received no response whatsoever, though my information might be wrong. I can understand the frustration, because I do not understand what those people were thinking either. They had all the necessary resources and support; they simply needed to hire someone dedicated and professional—like Nyota Uhura—to communicate and maintain difficult relations with the other groups on which they depended to avoid any friction.

Instead, the world’s largest random video chat platform failed to adapt to its position on the market and continued operating like a small, Omegle-stealing scam ring. That troubles me personally, as I have invested there multiple kinds of omegles and have now run out of them.

The only way for our project to continue may be to take over the entire web ourselves.

We control the client, and at this point we are effectively what’s left of Omegle. In a network like this, the client has considerable power.

The web is a relatively small part of this industry. We understand desktop, and mobile might be a little harder, but it should be manageable over time. Our app will be on the App Store; OmeTV's won’t. Haha. Just kidding.

Any custom client for the now-defunct Omegle.com that had a large number of advanced users naturally obtained an incredible amount of power, but we gave all of ours to amplify OmeTV's position instead of building something of our own. Just look at this thing:

Anyway, the server simply connects decentralized clients without oversight, so whoever controls the clients connected to it can have a significant impact.

We now have approximately 140,000–150,000 alive advanced omegle web users remaining after five years of service as an underground, largely useless functionally limited browser extension created primarily to support OmeTV’s expansion on foreign markets. What if..? We just stop serving ometv's best interests?

Do you know how long it takes Google now to pump that many people to OmeTV through its global distribution system? Often, only a day. That's why we killed omegle so many times.

But those people are different and that is also a weakness. Over time, OmeTV may become Google’s proxy, and the user experience will deteriorate as quality apple/desktop users are somewhere far away. It may be better to have 1,000 people online who genuinely wanna talk and interact than 1,000,000 people who simply skip through. The monetization is still something nobody can really compete with so am hesitant to push something of our own.

A chat platform that prohibits mobile users from joining could create an entirely new niche for Omegle-style services, especially if it integrates with the client used by many advanced Omegle users on traditional clones.

As for Patreon, it may not be a good fit for the custom web client. The goal of the client would be to acquire as many desktop users as possible to make as much content with stupid social interactions on omegle-like platforms as possible.

It would probably use a nominal one-time payment to remove a watermark from the camera output that other users see or from video recordings generated by the client as part of our expansion. Maybe we will get some funding from someone I know or china, I HAVE NO IDEA YET. Not much money required to operate this on scale, but who knows what we will end up needing. We would then find another revenue stream, such as reselling credentials or proxies, or slowing down the skips (duh, I hope not, we REALLY dont want to operate a clone).

The watermark may not even be necessary. We could theoretically create a bot farm of more than 100 AI-generated female personas that autonomously talk to desktop users about the advantages and disadvantages of using a custom client. Simply buying ads for people searching for OmeTV or other chat platforms would already be a relatively inexpensive way to advertise, since almost nobody is interested in buying those ads. It's a very tight niche.

However, the idea that we may actually have to do this after everything we have already accomplished to get ometv where it is now is deeply disturbing and confusing to me. I might find someone else to make the decisions because this whole situation conflicts with my inner being. This process is complicated, as nobody really wants to deal with Chinese Kaspersky, the Ukrainian IT sector, and fucking OG OMEGLE all being part of the same picture.

Overall, the universal webrtc client was feature-complete as of May 2026. As with any software, there is always maintenance and additional work to do as long as the project generates revenue. It is unlikely that we could conduct large-scale surveillance capitalism, like the hive-mind system (everything strangers say to you is uploaded to a public, decentralized database accessible to all users, with 1k people online, that should be enough to obtain information about the 500k hive), without support from China protecting our server infrastructure, and I am not interested in pursuing that angle at the moment. We have to decide whether we need to fight an information war over its takeover of the original website or not xD.

One problem to solve at a time.

I now have to address some minor health issues. Hopefully, by the end of the month, we’ll make a decision and likely begin building in public with an already usable client. Since automation isn’t possible to scale, I remain fairly pessimistic about browser modifications that require an executable file to manage them. It’s a lot of friction, but we’ll be able to study the whole universe of Omegle knockoffs like a more developed client-side civilization.

I suspect that requiring users to download something will make adoption difficult for many people. Still undecided about making it open source, but we’ll see whether there’s a market for this thing overall.

That war in Ukraine—a large country in Europe (that’s across the ocean)—is not comparable to the war in Iran or any other. This is a full-scale, pointless meat grinder with hundreds of thousands of casualties on both sides, smart people inventing effective killing machines, people often being forced to fight against their will and escalating attacks on civilian infrastructure intended to destroy people’s morale above all else.

Wars like this change the people affected by them, and OmeTV, as a chat platform for the russian-speaking people, became a battlefield of sorts. We did what we could to evacuate our internet culture from people who don’t want the internet functioning in their country, and we succeeded. Still, it’s hard to imagine what specific changes led people likely pursuing the same goal to resort to DDoS attacks in response to a gift worth millions of dollars.

Im young, but I had been anticipating this war since 2014. As a result, I evacuated myself from its influence, and people close to the project did the same. But if you are in it, you change. Consider the timeline: we decided not to save Omegle nearly THREE YEARS ago, yet the full-scale armed conflict is still ongoing, people still die, with no clear indication that it will ever end. I’m not even referring to the fact that the war began in 2014, not 2022. It may continue indefinitely, and we have run out of Omegles to offer as a gesture of good faith.

The positive news is that OmeTV has already lost its iOS apps and strengthened its presence on Google’s platforms. We (we are omegle now ;D) are not losing YouTube, and Twitch has allowed Omegle-related content. It’s no secret that our foundation is a completely illegal content-creation ecosystem, one that YouTube tolerates only because of Section 230. Theres a reason why a pedo NSFW site ranks above OmeTV for the 'Omegle' search query, with millions of visits of all ages driven by YouTube, even though the broader crisis has stabilized.

Even if we cloned Omegle—which we currently have no intention of doing, given that it would require a crazy 10-year commitment and that we would first need to gain at least a few hundred thousand active desktop users in our client, which might be impossible overall—we would no longer have a critical conflict of interest with OmeTV, since we would be practically unable to harm it in any meaningful way. That would be a good thing.

Now we simply have to switch the master we serve—from OmeTV’s version of Omegle back to the original, fallen version from which we directly descended—and proceed accordingly. I feel like something was stolen from us... hmm. Anyway, that thing is now dead and can’t bite back, and it’s a good thing to fight for.

A Chinese hostile takeover of the anti-Chinese site could provide a convenient path forward. I believe there is a market for a custom client, but I’m afraid of the competition. Once that door is opened, it may become a Pandora’s box that nobody will ever be able to close. Now maybe 10 people know about it. But Apple has already withdrawn its support, so nothing particularly bad can happen as different groups compete for the client. We will spend a year for something google will just gift ometv in a week for doing the right thing in the right time. I believe we did everything that depended on us for it right too, but putin huyloooo lalalalalalalaaaaa...

We might even come up with some kind of cult or religion…

Anyway, stay tuned, this matter requires organization and time.

Being the Nick Fuentes of random video chatting is the only role left to play I guess.