Online ‘Pedophile Hunters’ Are Growing More Violent — and Going Viral: With the rise of loosely moderated social media platforms, a fringe vigilante movement is experiencing a dangerous evolution.

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• FermionWrangler@lemm.ee ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  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”

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  • ZombiFrancis@sh.itjust.works ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Hell, KiwiFarms style tactics is becoming more and more common and mainstream. It’s on Lemmy too.

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  • Ghamorra@lemm.ee ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    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.

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  • TheHottyOney@lemmynsfw.com ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    They caused the death of a victim before: https://www.theguardian.com/media/2025/apr/01/us-officials-challenge-ofcoms-risk-to-free-speech-caused-by-online-safety-laws

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    • DragonTypeWyvern@midwest.social ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Ironic

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• RabbitBBQ@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Does a criminal arrest and conviction not matter to anyone before ganging up to take someones life?

  You would think an allegation serious enough to take someone’s life would be at least charged by some law enforcement agency, many of these crimes require they are reported by law, and a mandatory arrest must happen if it is reported. There should be no way for anyone to be free, needing to be hunted, without a criminal history. No distinction is made between someone with a criminal history and someone without, the allegation has become enough to destroy reputations, careers and lives. History is full of situations where an other type of label and class with no rights or due process is created. Then it is applied to people as needed to eliminate them. With LGBT stuff specifically, you see the lines between these labels being blurred. Even in Russia they have blurred the lines between LGBT, child abuse, domestic terrorism and dangers to national security. It doesn’t take much imagination to see it be applied in the U.S. QAnon was proof that anyone can be labelled by a large number of people with real actions taken to harm them, without any kind of formal process or charges. Just rumors that lead to vigilantes.

  At some point, there is no difference between that, Daniel Penny, or Luigi Manigone. From every side, we all agree that summary executions are acceptable. The end result of this is a break down of civil society as the justifications for extrajudicial murder expand to include as many things as necessary…

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• ExtantHuman@lemm.ee ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  There’s one in the white house. Why don’t they seem to care about that one?

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• boolean_sledgehammer@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  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.

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• StarlightDust@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  I monitor far-right groups pretty intensively and a good chunk of Paedophile Hunters are key organisers of said groups.

  Its also not uncommon for far-right groups to be family operations where the adults will groom their teenage children into organizing and encourage their children to date other, often older, fascist organisers.

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  • FermionWrangler@lemm.ee ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Unsurprising as most of the “pedophile hunters” are extremist by nature, so it makes sense why they would also subscribe to extremist ideologies like Nazism and queerphobia.

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  • TheFriar@lemm.ee ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Look at how much conspiracy content especially after 2016 focused on pedophilia. A lot of it. That carried over into this

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• mhague@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  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.”

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  • UltraGiGaGigantic@lemmy.ml ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Nazis: If you support LGBT you’re a pedophile. And we’re already coming for you.

    I’ll be waiting.

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• DicJacobus@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Vigilantism is on the rise regardless, Either because the police are incompetent / carefree about the complaints. or because individuals are overzealous, dont undrestand or agree with the law, and decide to cosplay as the punisher.

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  • DragonTypeWyvern@midwest.social ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Or because the facade of “justice” is crumbling to reveal the truth of heirarchy behind it.

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• RaptorBenn@lemmy.zip ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  It’s unfortunate this has to be taken into the hands of vigilantes. But it seems to me a necessary evil.

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  • erin@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Except sometimes “pedophile” actually means “trans person just living.” The right claims all trans people are groomers.

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    • RaptorBenn@lemmy.zip ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Obviously, if they’re targeting trans people specifically for being trans, i dont support that. But if they got lured by these guys, doesnt it mean they’re pedo’s?

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• ubergeek@lemmy.today ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  This only happens because there is rarely justice from the state, in these cases.

  How many clergy who are rapists still walk around, protected by the state?

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• Allero@lemmy.today ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  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.

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  • T156@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    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.

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    • Allero@lemmy.today ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Absolutely!

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  • Adderbox76@lemmy.ca ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    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.

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    • Allero@lemmy.today ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      …or you do neither of those?

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    • Lazhward@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      You’re clearly missing several possibilities.

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  • fibojoly@sh.itjust.works ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    That’s an interesting and reasonable take.
    I’m actually surprised you are not down voted to oblivion!

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    • Allero@lemmy.today ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Guess this is what happens when you meet real people online who are not artificially enraged - a productive conversation!

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  • ubergeek@lemmy.today ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    The pedophiles being attacked are actively hunting, otherwise, they wouldn’t be caught in a trap…

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    • Doctor_Satan@lemm.ee ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      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.

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    • Allero@lemmy.today ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Sure, but shows of this kind imply that all pedophiles are child abusers and all child abusers are pedophiles, neither of which is true - and such equations are harmful.

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• Sam_Bass@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  They should be stalking the Repuglicans in Washington. Make a ton of bounty I bet

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• RymrgandsDaughter@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  So Conservative Pedo apologists are going to be using this to hunt Lgbtq people and the current culture war of “this is child indoctrination” despite everyone knowing that’s not how this works is open season pass.

  Really makes me regret not arming myself two years ago

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• WhatSay@slrpnk.net ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  I had a friend who was visiting Florida, and this vigilante group from some church setup a Grindr account to catch gay men. They made a profile of a guy in his 20s, had convos and planned to meet, then asked him to talk on some other platform, where his profile said he was underage. Keep in mind, this is just a fictional person. And the Florida court loves to toss LGBT in jail, so beware out there.

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  • Ledericas@lemm.ee ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    You can use that against them, say they are in the church right now

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  • interdimensionalmeme@lemmy.ml ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Solution bait the baiters

    Practical solution, abandon all social interactions with strangers

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    • UltraGiGaGigantic@lemmy.ml ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      I’m way ahead of you in my basement of solitude.

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• Ledericas@lemm.ee ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  they mistaken quite a few people.

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• OmegaLemmy@discuss.online ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Oh. They’re just gonna call people pedo and attack them even though they’re not. It’s extremely obvious.

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  • FermionWrangler@lemm.ee ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    They’re going to attack LGBT people and say they’re pedos for being LGBT.

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  • KuroNeko@lemm.ee ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    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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  • ours@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Or very likely make mistakes. Vigilantes is nice in comic books and movies, in real life it turns terrible very quickly.

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  • Ledericas@lemm.ee ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Specifically LGBT+ and pocs will be harmed

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  • Ledericas@lemm.ee ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    probably under the guise of attacking lgbtq+ group.

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  • Agent641@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Just prove you’re not a pedo and they will leave you alone.

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    • Jerb322@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      You forgot the /s…

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    • Allero@lemmy.today ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Good luck proving you’re not anything to an angry mob.

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    • ComradeRachel@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Image

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• Rob200@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Predator catching channels are important. Should not be censored. Just cause a few channel might had been acting fascist like towards minorities with intention to degrade trans people. Which from many of the channels I seen, they seem to be strictly going after adults going after minors on the internet. If any are intentionally going after just trans people or other minorities just because, they use it as an excuse to harass it’s rare.

  Are there even any actual specific channels and videos that even point out that something like this is even happening in these predator catching movements?

  I will meet you some of you here. If they are not working with law enforcement and are just harassing people, that is not ok. I’m against this native that’s going against predator catching channels as a whole because it is so out of touch with reality. Instead of calling a whole movement violent, call out the 'specific" offending channel. If you can’t do that, what does that say about your narative.

  Anyone that thinks that they should all* be censored, get ready to censor gaming channels and played heavily while you’re at it. Plenty of gamers online said some rascist, and homophobic things. I’m not changing my mind on this.

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  • Korhaka@sopuli.xyz ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Better rules for them to follow might be a compromise. And harsh penalties for failing to follow them as it can mess up real police investigations too.

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• Melvin_Ferd@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  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

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  • Kbibble@lemm.ee ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    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, they 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.

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  • uienia@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    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.

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    • Melvin_Ferd@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      No, I think this is it. This is the media doing what media does

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  • HappySkullsplitter@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Seems like a lot of these pedo hunters end up being pedos themselves

    Lots of projection going on here

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  • Korhaka@sopuli.xyz ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Poorly regulated pedo hunters that can end up ruining genuine law enforcement efforts at catching pedos aren’t good.

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    • ubergeek@lemmy.today ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Genuine law enforcement efforts?

      Like their efforts to protect rapists? Or the genuine efforts to vote for a rapist and pedo for POTUS? And their genuine effort to provide cover for their pastor pedo?

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    • Ledericas@lemm.ee ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Actually Leo don’t do shit about pedophelia, because it usually involves powerful people

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    • LordGimp@lemm.ee ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      The bigger problem is that genuine law enforcement efforts are discouraged from actually catching pedophiles because they often end up being constituents of those same cops, either politically or socially. It’s either a priest, a super PAC donor, or another cop on the other end of that investigation.

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• cy_narrator@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  It should be illegal if they do not call the police afterwards they are done with their personal justice

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• interdimensionalmeme@lemmy.ml ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Pedo accusations don’t come from concerns for kids but from enpowerement to do violence and the ability to righteously attack.

  This inversion from concern for others to desire to cause harm through paranoia derived justifications is becoming a real problem.

  If someone steps in to stop them attacking the innocent they will claim those people are defending pedos.

  We’re going to have the stupidest of wars on our hands.

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  • T156@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    It’s basically the same motivation as people who have a gun and are itching for the apocalypse so they can loose the safeties.

    Even saying that it’s righteous violence is ascribing positive motivations that may not exist. They’re just looking for someone to attack, and an alleged paedophile is a socially acceptable target to unleash that violence on.

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  • UltraGiGaGigantic@lemmy.ml ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    We’re going to have the stupidest of wars on our hands.

    Finally, my decades of stupid training will pay off!

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  • HawlSera@lemm.ee ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    This.

    Plus it’s self defeating. Too often when they find real predators, the evidence is tainted by the way it was collected by idiots who have no idea what they’re doing.

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    • Ledericas@lemm.ee ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Yea, all of that is not admissible in court too. And they often end up attacking innocent people, additionally it labels them a pedo so, they instantly get fired, lose their wives, children, friends,etc

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  • kerrigan778@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    There’s a reason an insane number of the people who publicly attack pedophillia are in fact pedophiles.

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    • Ledericas@lemm.ee ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      That too, but also some have been not to be pedos, I doubt these influencers will reveal the ones they attacked are not one,.bum

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    • interdimensionalmeme@lemmy.ml ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      I assumed it was because they are so sloppy, they use it in any disagreement “you’re either with us or you’re a pedophile !” much in the same way we often here “don’t call everyone a Nazi” Do we see many Nazi calling each other Nazi in anger and in a derogatory manner ?

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  • Alpha71@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    One could call the the “Stupid Wars”

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    • callouscomic@lemm.ee ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      “Stupid wars need the MOST attention.”

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• deathbird@mander.xyz ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  This is part of the reason why casual accusations of pedophilia have always disturbed me. Because it can lead even people who in most other circumstances would be considered pro-justice and pro-human rights into mini-Mengeles.

  And I’ve seen people just throw out the accusation without even prompt or justification, just because they hate somebody (maybe for other good reasons) and want to see if it sticks. It’s fucked up.

  Then there’s other cases like that one where that 18-year-old got jumped for being baited into going on a date with another 18-year-old, while under the impression that she was… at least 18. A couple of people posted about that already.

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  • faythofdragons@slrpnk.net ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Yeah, I got accusations thrown at me after letting a trans lady crash at my place when she came out and her ex-wife kicked her out of the house. Everybody was an adult, but the ex-wife found a friend in the TERFs, and they think trans rights is pedo apologism.

    I got molested by my babysitter when I was 5, and it was incredibly infuriating to hear people say it was the same as a fucking divorce.

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    • HawlSera@lemm.ee ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Disgusting.

      Sadly as a transwoman I have heard “You should have left the kids alone!” From ex-friends who were Pro-Trans until it became “Support transpeople or support Trump”

      I was disgusted, a former ally suddenly and without evidence starting seeing his many transfriends as paedos

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• HulkSmashBurgers@reddthat.com ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Heh seems to me that these pedophile hunters are just violent hateful people who found a way to make their hate and violence appear righteous.

  There should be no tolerance for vigilante justice in a civilized society.

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• kameecoding@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Did people not watch The Hunt?

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• ellypony@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  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

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• Wolverdiddlyino@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Can we do billionaires next? There is surely a little overlap.

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• Gradually_Adjusting@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  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.

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• chetradley@lemm.ee ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  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.

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• Bzdalderon@lemmy.ca ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Genuinely surprised and relived by the amount of common sense in this thread, that’s all I have to say

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• LovableSidekick@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  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 to live in a world where my safety depends on the right people being in the mob.

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