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Web chat meets the vice squad

Jon Skillings Editorial director
Jon Skillings is an editorial director at CNET, where he's worked since 2000. A born browser of dictionaries, he honed his language skills as a US Army linguist (Polish and German) before diving into editing for tech publications -- including at PC Week and the IDG News Service -- back when the web was just getting under way, and even a little before. For CNET, he's written on topics from GPS, AI and 5G to James Bond, aircraft, astronauts, brass instruments and music streaming services.
Expertise AI, tech, language, grammar, writing, editing Credentials
  • 30 years experience at tech and consumer publications, print and online. Five years in the US Army as a translator (German and Polish).
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Jon Skillings

It's a naked affront to Confucian principles of public decorum.

By the thousands, apparently, Internet users in China are taking off their clothes for a naughty nightly rendezvous in cyberspace. And that has raised the hackles of China Youth Association researcher Liu Gang, who identified the practice as a threat to public health and morality, according to an Associated Press story that cited the Shanghai Daily newspaper.

"At first, we thought if was merely a game for a few mentally abnormal people...But as our research continued, we found the problem was much larger than expected," Liu was quoted as saying. The Shanghai paper said that as many as 20,000 people--out of an estimated 87 million Internet users--are using chat software and Webcams to "talk with others while exposing themselves and performing provocative poses."

It's enough to make one nostalgic for JenniCam, a notoriously uninhibited site from the early days of the Web.