chatroulette

chatroulette.com offers people the possibility to check in with someone anonymous, exchanging live footage from the webcams of both people involved, and a switch-button allowing either of the two to stop the interaction at will and without explanation.

1. I am convinced chatroulette has an addictive aspect.

2. It also tampers with Kant’s Practical Imperative:
“Act to treat humanity, whether yourself or another, as an end-in-itself and never as a means”. Immanuel Kant, 1758. Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten. J. F. Hartknoch, p. BA 67.

Does that mean that chatroulette has finally delivered us from the imperatives of respect—or that, maybe, chatroulette is profoundly unethical?