• Allero@lemmy.today
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    7 days 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.

    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.

    • fibojoly@sh.itjust.works
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      7 days ago

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

    • T156@lemmy.world
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      6 days 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.

    • Hemingways_Shotgun@lemmy.ca
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      6 days 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.

    • ubergeek@lemmy.today
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      7 days ago

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

      • Doctor_Satan@lemm.ee
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        7 days 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.

      • Allero@lemmy.today
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        7 days ago

        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.

        • jj4211@lemmy.world
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          7 days ago

          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.

  • OmegaLemmy@discuss.online
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    7 days ago

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

    • ours@lemmy.world
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      7 days ago

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

    • KuroNeko@lemm.ee
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      6 days 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.

  • boolean_sledgehammer@lemmy.world
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    6 days 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.

  • StarlightDust@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    6 days 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.

  • mhague@lemmy.world
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    6 days 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.”

  • FermionWrangler@lemm.ee
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    6 days 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

  • WhatSay@slrpnk.net
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    7 days 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.

  • DicJacobus@lemmy.world
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    6 days 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.

  • Melvin_Ferd@lemmy.world
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    7 days 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

    • uienia@lemmy.world
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      7 days 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.

    • Korhaka@sopuli.xyz
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      7 days ago

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

      • Ledericas@lemm.ee
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        7 days ago

        Actually Leo don’t do shit about pedophelia, because it usually involves powerful people, usually ends up being a pastor, priest of the church or one of their own, or a politician. Some sites online hide in plain site, with a format similar to r/pics if you dig deeper there’s significant talk about commiting pedophelia acts, beastiality. And the sites often get taken down for other reasons besides thst

      • LordGimp@lemm.ee
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        7 days 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.

      • ubergeek@lemmy.today
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        7 days 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?

    • Kbibble@lemm.ee
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      7 days 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, 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.

  • Sam_Bass@lemmy.world
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    7 days ago

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

  • RymrgandsDaughter@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    7 days 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

  • RabbitBBQ@lemmy.world
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    6 days 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… Even if you take something like the damage Kendrick Lamar did to Drake’s career and reputation, I believe his legal defense over defamation is that it was meant as a joke. How many people would consider using these methods if they saw Drake? A lot of time has passed since that song was released, where are the criminal charges to match the damage done to him?

  • ubergeek@lemmy.today
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    7 days 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?