Lots of people in the comments are failing to see the issue with this, so allow me to illustrate. Fair warning, this will not be an easy read.
So let’s imagine you really hate trans people, gay people, and liberals. Unfortunately for you, none of these are crimes (yet), so you can’t just go around assaulting and killing these people indiscriminately, as much as you’d like to. So what are you going to do?
Well, the best hate campaigns start with a shared enemy, and nobody is more hated than a child predator. Best of all, you can do pretty much whatever you want to them with no recourse. What are they going to do, call the police? Nobody is going to speak out against what you’re doing, because if they do, you can just say that if they don’t support you, then they must be defending child predators!
Now that we have a precedent for violence, it’s time to expand our scope a bit. Since hunting pedophiles is a-ok, now you just need to label anyone you don’t like a pedophile. You could say gay and trans people are pedophiles and groomers. And again, if anyone opposes you, just call them a groomer too!
But maybe that’s not enough for you. No, you want to make sure that you can target anyone who disagrees with you. Well good news, because you can just join a group of people who believe that anyone who dislikes Donald Trump is a deep state pedophile. You don’t even need evidence anymore, and there’s a good chance the cops will be on your side! Happy hunting!
Seriously though, this vigilante “justice” should not be celebrated. Yes, we need to take child predators off the streets, but there is a process for that. Denying anyone due process opens the door to denying it to everyone.
I’d say it’s also a problem that the sort of people who use the Internet to find people to beat up are idiots, so even if they aren’t going out of their way to victimize minorities, odds are they’ll just beat up some random person.
Don’t they already do that? Them getting attacked isn’t getting in a court conviction anytime soon, because it will be disregarded evidence, and it was done with prejudice too
Do people read this and fail to realize that the “calling everyone I disagree with is a Nazi” rhetoric is the exact same thing? Yes, they do
Are you accusing me of being alarmist after I provided sources for the things that are actually going on?
Only one thing to do: set two pedophile hunters up on a date.
That is fucking genius
Like when one police precinct sets up a drug bust on an undercover cop from another precinct pretending to be a drug dealer.
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.
They are already doing that shit.
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Reddit would be outraged about an 18 yo dating a 16 yo, though. Some people have really weird and unrealistic views on this
shit gonna morph into persecuting queer people real quick.
And then when it’s pointed out a bunch of mfs are gonna say. “Why are you AFRAID?? WhAt aN odd tHinG to sAy!! they’re only going after bad people!”
like shit brother. right on brother. Im sorry. I guess all those 1920’s lynch mobs were only going after criminals too then 🤷♂️. Matter of fact I bet no innocent people were hurt, and it wasn’t because of the color of their skin at all. Only criminals! /s
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.
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.
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.
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.
“less oversight than police.” A bar so low you need a shovel to get under it.
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.”
Oh hey, it’s “won’t somebody please think of the children?” taken to the streets for internet clout! Absolutely nothing wrong can happen there! /s
Bread and circuses
Oh I get it. So this stuff gets pushed on left wing spaces. Then the left wing adopts this ethos where they say “pedo hunters aren’t good” then the right goes “oh you’re all pedophiles” and then the divide is bigger
That’s not it. The right will lie about anything. If we change our beliefs to prevent the right from lying about us we would never have to stop changing our beliefs.
This is more about right wing militias hunting lqtb+ people under the guise of pedophilia.
No, I think this is it. This is the media doing what media does
Perhaps it’s best to make the distinction that this is creating a new type of predator, Violence Predators. Because that’s what the problem is. Right now they are going after the targets no one cares about, when they run low on those targets, either because the need for “content/violence” outpaces the supply of easy targets, some of them will find new ones, while using the old label to mask what they are doing.
So make that distinction, because it’s not about the people hunting pedophiles, it’s about the people hunting for violence. If there’s an overlap that doesn’t need to be the focus of the argument, because that’s the red herring.
Seems like a lot of these pedo hunters end up being pedos themselves
Lots of projection going on here
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.
There’s one in the white house. Why don’t they seem to care about that one?
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.
Beating up pedophiles sounds great, so does beating up rapists and murderers, but remember you can be called a pedophile for leaning in close to a kid in a photo. “B-but in this case it really WAS a bad guy” doesn’t justify mob violence. I don’t want my safety to depend on the right people being in a particular mob on a Thursday.
I always knew there was something wrong with that these people were doing but couldn’t exactly put my finger on it and never talked about it because people would’ve yelled at me and used false dillema arguments like many people who criticized them back them recieved “You support pedophiles you removed”
One of these groups that operate out of the Pacific North West employs psychologists to create profiles on people the contact online. They target non-sex related forums like grief or mental health related support groups online. They’ll spend as much time as needed to hook these men and make them dependent on their carefully crafted online personas and even drive away their outside support groups to isolate them.
Regardless of your opinion of these individuals, going out of your way to exploit a vulnerable person and turn them into something their not is incredibly fucked up.
