There’s one more angle to this - apart from the raise in vigilante violence and messing up with police operations which both are very valid.
Just as we stopped getting TV feeds constantly equating pedophiles to child molesters, those guys stepped in to fill the void.
Pedophiles are not inherently child molesters. This kind of equation is not only wrong, it also adds to promoting dangerous behaviors among them.
Plenty of pedophiles will never abuse a single child, knowing full well it is dangerous and harmful for minors to be engaged in such relationships. However, the more we equate pedophiles to predators, the more people, especially in the emotionally vulnerable groups like teen pedophiles, will actually accept themselves in this role. Among those who stands against this anyway, plenty will become suicidal, not seeing an option to live a non-offending life.
Current methods of therapy aimed at reducing child abuse rates go very strongly on this - pedophiles should face message of them not being inherently dangerous, not the message of them being an immediate and imminent danger. Not only this is scientifically correct, it is actually useful in making these people safer for others.
Not only that, but it both reduces the chance of someone going to get help, because they don’t want to be hunted down, and reporting, because someone who knows of them might not want to see them be lynched, and won’t report them for that reason.
The pedophiles being attacked are actively hunting, otherwise, they wouldn’t be caught in a trap…
Some of these “pedo hunter” groups have attacked completely innocent people where the accusation of someone being a pedo was completely unsubstantiated. This is the problem with monetizing vigilantism: It creates a demand, and if that demand is not being met by a supply of actual criminals, then it will be filled by vigilantes criminalizing innocent people.
Sure, but shows of this kind commonly imply that all pedophiles are child abusers and all child abusers are pedophiles, neither of which is true - and such equations have real-world negative implications.
In practice, I don’t see how I would even know someone is a pedophile if they didn’t act on their inclinations. I guess they could publicly declare it but that seems unwise.
I would be concerned if the Internet vigilantes ran with unsubstantiated rumors, like if say Elon musk just called someone a pedophile or of the blue.
That’s an interesting and reasonable take.
I’m actually surprised you are not down voted to oblivion!There’s no such thing as a “non-harmful” pedofile.
Either you’re actively molesting children (yes…even teens), or you’re consuming the CP that is the result of OTHER people abusing children by forcing them to participate and worse.
You don’t get to say “its not repulsive to consume the product as long as youre not a creator of it”. Consuming the end result is still participating in it.
I can’t believe that even has to be pointed out.
While pedophile hunters seem barbaric to me, I don’t have kids.
I do have a dog, and dog hunter hunters, as in “people hunting dog hunters”, seem all right for me.
Cowards really like to inflict pain on creatures not well enough protected by the law. So hunting them is maybe good for the society.
So deontology and principles and morals only matter when they are challenged by one’s own impulses. Innocent until proven guilty in the court of law.
I think you can dislike pedophiles and even want to see them punished, yet still recognize that some asshole doing it to get revenue from their YouTube channel is not the right solution.
Personally, I’m of the opinion that most crime is the result of either poverty or neurological flaws, and torture is not the best solution to either problem.
People need to be kept safe, and the criminal justice system is ostensibly the mechanism we’ve decided to use for that.
You can dislike pedophiles and dog hunter yet still recognize some asshole doing it out of inflamed self-righteousness with no regard for evidence, human rights, due process is not the right solution. If even the legal system with all its checks and balances gets things wrong so often, what can you expect from some asshole out for blood?
The criminal justice system is meant to not only seek justice for victims, keep us safe from predation…… well yes vigilantism is another form of predation. Their self-righteousness doesn’t absolve their guilt. Heck, at least most pedophiles don’t try to defend themselves as doing their job right thing
Yes, yes, I know all that. I meant that all this conversation is rather useless because when actually compelled to do something, most people ignore principles.
Republicans and Church leaders everywhere are terrified.
Nazis: If you support LGBT you’re a pedophile. And we’re already coming for you.
People, for some fucking reason: Pedophiles get fucked, do what you want to them, erase them at any cost!!
“Please hold this paper target in front of your face while I shoot at it.”
“Sounds dangerous but I see you are aiming at the paper so I should be fine.”
Israel is a know destination for exposed pedophiles…
A quick word to anyone seeing this and thinking “oh that’s fine”, look into the Snowtown Massacres". That’s what it looks like when this kind of thing actually happens. Life isn’t a Tarantino film, those who accomplish their aims violently are generally very dumb.
Hi everyone, just a friendly reminder that guns are legal in the United States for the time being.
Reddit would be outraged about an 18 yo dating a 16 yo, though. Some people have really weird and unrealistic views on this
That’s why I find reddit so strange. Age gaps is apparently the most demonic thing you can do. No matter if you’re 19 dating a 17 or 34 dating a 27 you’re a huge red flag either way.
Yup, and the arguments are so weirdly self centered, too. “I went through so much when I started college, what would I talk about with someone in HIGH SCHOOL?” (19-17 gap) Dude, you started smoking pot and went to a few frat parties, it’s not that deep. Also are these people just always discussing life experiences for some reason? No shared interests, hobby groups, common acquaintances?
Those Redditors are probably 16 year olds themselves upset that the girls they like are always going for 18 - 20 year olds
Ding ding ding.
Oh. They’re just gonna call people pedo and attack them even though they’re not. It’s extremely obvious.
Or very likely make mistakes. Vigilantes is nice in comic books and movies, in real life it turns terrible very quickly.
probably under the guise of attacking lgbtq+ group.
Just prove you’re not a pedo and they will leave you alone.
You forgot the /s…
I never use /s. /s is the training wheels of online comments. /s is for cowards. Ride or die baby!
If anyone takes me seriously, it’s their own damn fault.
Ha, rock on with your bad self.
Good luck proving you’re not anything to an angry mob.
Reminder this fuckface ruined the investigation into Onision for his show.
Sad because actual paedos gonna be like “who, not me, someone cried wolf on me!”… As someone who was trafficked and abused with my sister and then even after she got out, I’ve heard them laugh about paedos caught in the news and act like they’re not exactly that. Meanwhile the people who actually hurt me stayed or died free because you also see on the news how false accusations ruin innocent people’s lives, so it feels like what we say as real victims not only doesn’t matter but will be ignored because sexism is back full-swing and they prefer us women to be seen and not heard once again like the old days. I wish patriarchal societies weren’t hell-bent on using and ending women and children to justify their means of global blackmail control.
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They’re going to attack LGBT people and say they’re pedos for being LGBT.
What this ultimately amounts to is the worst actors using a blanket justification to carry out revenge fantasies against whatever marginalized group they’re fixated on.
If you happen to be part of any of these marginalized groups, now would be the time to get armed and get dangerous. It would be great if we lived in a functioning society where this wasn’t necessary, but the failure of so many of our institutions is slowly rewinding our social fabric back to wild west times.
Great. Just dump anyone you dislike as a “pedophile” and then it’s a free for all.
When AI can create any image or video based on another person with their perfect face and voice, besides the scams that will keep increasing, the other great value of the tech is that we going to be able to create any proof and footage we want to incriminate whoever we wish.
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especially when you have people like elon musk calling people they don’t like paedophiles and winning defamation suits over it by claiming he calls everyone paedophiles.
Hmm, I seem to recall Trump being a pedophile.
They don’t actually care about pedophiles; a lot of them are pedophiles
Yes.
They are already doing that shit.
Not advocating for all this, but if they really cared, couldn’t they just run down the registered sex offender list and start with the multiple convictions?
couldn’t they just run down the registered sex offender list
The point of their channels is usually to find new predators that haven’t been caught, so they can then face legal consequences, (or at least be pushed to stop acting on their desires) rather than to punish people for being pedophiles in general, so it wouldn’t really make sense to go after those who were already convicted.
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It’s usually done by posing as a teenager in chats, then they get confronted at the meet-up.
Pretty solid way to identify the right person.
Pretty solid way to identify the right person.
And that’s why entrapment is a legally sanctioned investigation strategy for law enforcement.
Oh, wait, it isn’t, because of all the abuses that resulted from its use.
It depends on how these channels are going about finding their victims for it to be considered similar.
Remember, entrapment is based around luring someone to do something they otherwise would not have done had the operation to entrap them not occurred. If they created an account posing as a minor, then directly DM’d a person asking if they wanted to do x/y/z with a minor, that would be entrapment.
But if they made an account claiming to be a minor on social media, and the person contacted them voluntarily, asked their age, was told it was under 18 and still continued messaging, then sent explicit photos, that’s not entrapment.
However, if they were then the people who initiated the conversation about wanting the person to come to their house / visit them somewhere, that could be considered entrapment, and the only evidence against the person that could be eligible for use in court would be the explicit material they sent without being prompted.
It varies case-by-case, but from what I’ve seen, most of the larger operations tend to try and avoid entrapment-like tactics in most cases, where they only allow the other person to initiate unlawful behaviors, rather than prompting anything themselves.
These folks include presenting a false person as being of age, then switching to underage at the time of meetup when the target shows up.
A group descends upon the target who is now told they’re a pedophile.
Then the group tries to kill the person who was trying to meet what they thought was an adult.
And the perpetrators think this is justice.
These folks include presenting a false person as being of age, then switching to underage at the time of meetup when the target shows up.
I’ve never seen even a single instance in my own viewership of numerous channels that engage in pedophile hunting where the person is presented as being above the legal age of consent, then only switching to underage at the time of the meeting. They’re presented as underage from the get-go.
Then the group tries to kill the person
Again, this doesn’t seem to be a widespread thing compared to the number of them that simply lure them to a location then ask them questions (and directly state that they are free to leave at any time since they’re not law enforcement and can’t arrest them) The people you’re talking about are a small minority of both the actual number of pedo hunters, and the number of overall views received.
And the perpetrators think this is justice.
I doubt the people that are explicitly lying to farm content think it’s justice. I do believe the people actually catching people who voluntarily contacted someone presented as underage from the start do.
Ah, catch a predator style. Gotcha. Removed my comment because it was wrong. So far anyway.
I mean, I don’t know that ALL of them work that way, but the ones I’ve seen do. I have mixed feelings about the whole scenario.
I’m not a fan of vigilantism or mob justice save for the removal of objectively destructive and tyrannical leadership. Too many ways to get it wrong.
This is a symptom. If police won’t do it’s job there will be some guys who will take it into their own hands. The problem is they have even less oversight than police.
Is that really the only problem you see with people taking justice into their own hands? Less oversight?
When they go after the wrong person, yes. When they decide to both be the police, judge and executioner, yes.
But if the judiciary system doesn’t do it’s work, what do you expect.
I can assure you that the judiciary system in my country does work. It’s just that these people either a. just want to beat someone up and need an excuse, or b. don’t agree with our laws and think it should be prison time for a 18 year old who wants to date a 16 year old, or a 21 year old who wants to date a 17 year old.
Even if the judiciary system in your country doesn’t do its work, people taking justice in their own hands is a fundamentally bad thing for a society. I don’t pity predators if they get what they deserve, but I pity the society that suddenly has to define boundaries - where do you draw the line? Not all cases are clear cut. Not everyone operates on the same set of morals.
Example: Religious zealots really do believe that abortions kill children. If society doesn’t categorically forbid people to take justice into their own hands but goes “well, in this case, we can all understand”, you will have other people acting in ways they perceive as equally justifiable. And then abortion doctors get murdered.
The users who downvoted me don’t seem to have this understanding, they would rather have revenge. If you people don’t understand that self-justice will ultimately lead to a more violent society, then go ahead, downvote me again. You’re the reason your country isn’t a more civilized place, wherever you live.
Disproportionate punishment is another of course. They probably lump pedophiles (a person with a psychiatric disorder) and child molesters (a person that actually harms children) into the same group and you deserve to die for simply thinking the wrong things.
They lump far more people into the same group. They attack anyone whom they think they can, even if they know that their accusations are BS.
A person does not need to point out all problems when pointing out one problem.
The problem is what if they mistake somebody for the wrong person? That’s enough to destroy an innocent persons life.
The government mistakes people for wrong person all the time too though
Sometimes on purpose
That’s not the only problem. They’re making content, so finding “the right person” will inevitably be less important than finding a person. Can’t fall out of the Almighty Algorithm’s favor, amirite?
So … What you’re saying, it’s that there would be less oversight when it comes to choosing their targets. Almost exactly like OP said. Almost like they were speaking in broad strokes and you failed to notice any nuance.
Bruh, why are you taking umbrage? Chill, I didn’t shit on your birthday cake.
Honestly? I just don’t really like that reddit behaviour of regurgitating the previous person’s comment and passing it off as your own unique idea, that’s all.
I took a general comment and said something very specific. What you saw as dual meaning, I saw as one. OP did not make their intended meaning clear.
Maybe we can be better than Reddit and be more charitable with each other here, yeah?
Pedophile hunting is among several vigilante movements in the United States. Groups in the South try to catch alleged drug smugglers at the border; others monitor local crime. The new wave of pedophile hunters stands out for adopting the social media influencer model, using real-life violence to build a following online.
This is about clout chasing and being violent monsters
And if anyone calls them out on it, they’re immediately branded as “pedophile sympathizers” if not actual pedophiles themselves. So, not only do they get to be violent monsters, saying that they shouldn’t commit horrible violence without any sort of legal oversight (or at all, really) makes YOU the bad guy!
They can deflect doubt because they are hunting pedophiles.
“You wouldn’t defend a pedophile now, would you?” - clout chasing violence monger
And if you haven’t found any pedophiles yet, well, I guess you’re not trying hard enough. Or maybe… you are one of them… 😠
Can’t believe this needs an /s
“less oversight than police.” A bar so low you need a shovel to get under it.
They see them everywhere except in their own home
Bread and circuses
Did people not watch The Hunt?
