Algorithms and Inequality: How Camming Sites Work

Credits: Alexander Drumming (Unsplash) UvA researcher Olav Velthuis on the nature of webcam sex platforms, their risks and opportunities and the need for balanced understanding. The exact details remain sketchy. All we know is that at some point on 3 April 1996, a young American student by the name of Jennifer Ringley ushered in a new phase in the then nascent Internet revolution. Supposedly, Ringley didn't really know what to do with the small web camera she bought at a local library. Bored and curious, she eventually decided to hook it up to her computer and open up her private life to the public. In the years that followed, her website, JenniCam, would end up attracting millions of viewers who would pay to watch Ringley act out her life in real-time: from the mundane to the sexually provocative to the outright explicit. By the time JenniCam went down in 2003, lifecasting, or webcamming as it would later become known, had become a thoroughly established Internet phenomenon.