[T]here are privacy issues—-people taking screengrabs of other users in the half-second they happen to be looking at a pornographic image, then spreading them around the web. (I’m sure there are at least 300 images of me wincing at a masturbating stranger.) Sexual predators have never had an easier way to expose themselves, potentially even to children (the site has no apparent age limit). And then there’s the threat of violence. One popular shock image, a picture of a man who’s hanged himself, is terrifying even after you realize it’s fake: It makes you think about the possibility of someone actually hurting themselves, or someone else, in the unmappable ether of social-media space.

Surely broadcasting oneself masturbating, which by many accounts is a significant Chatroulette hobby, could run afoul of public indecency laws and/or spottily enforced (and constitutionally suspect) federal laws banning the use of electronic communications to harass. I suppose it's conceivable that, in some jurisdictions, successful use of the service in an effort to find unlawful material might trigger criminal liability, but this would very much depend on the level of intent required under the statute (ordinary curious users should have nothing to worry about).