Provoking illegal behaviour should not be encouraged.

I think it’s immoral in the sense they rarely involve, or bring their cases to police. Yeah, it sucks to get caught for the predator, but he’s still out there capable of harming children.

It feels gross that child rape is compelling stakes for TV entertainment.

That’s why you don’t like it. Because at the end of the day, this content isn’t being produced to save kids, it’s so you have something to watch on a Tuesday.

You think it is real? How did you determine that?

Yes.

For two reasons.

First: Two wrongs doesn’t make a right.

Second: The police has far more resources to verify suspicions than any vigilante has. The risk of acting on false accusations or bad dats is just way too big. Also if the predator has had multiple victims a vigilante may miss that and never giving all vicitms closure or compensation.

Here’s my take:

the people profiting off shows and podcasts where they do this sort of thing are absolutely immoral, bordering on outright bad. Evil is a bit too intense, but you get the idea. Unless they’re donating any revenue to help children, then they’re shitty.

The people doing the baiting are only immoral IN MY OPINION if they are the ones to initiate things. If they sit back and passively respond while the guy starts sending dick pics and suggesting they meet to have sex, then it’s not immoral in my opinion. When they go into a conversation with “I’m a minor, let’s meet for [REDACTED]” then it’s still wrong.

Of course, on the other side of the screen, the guy either suggesting or agreeing with meeting up is clearly always in the wrong.

Both parties involved can be in the wrong.

Yeah I don’t like it. In the same way that I don’t like people filming themselves giving money to homeless people.

As a child, I was preyed upon by an adult.

To me, people making content doing this kind of “hunter” shit is vile. The victims are real children, and you’re using them & their pain to fuel your ego and hero complex? For “”“entertainment”“”? And they’re monetizing it?? Disgusting.

If you’re going to be a vigilante, be quiet and anonymous about it. And be absolutely certain about everything that had occurred.

I still wish someone had gone after my abuser, even after all these years. It would have given me peace knowing that they are no longer out there.

The way I’ve seen it being done it certainly is. They care more about their viewer counts than punishing wrongdoers so much so they quite often accuse innocent people and then harass them based on incorrect assumptions instead of actual hard evidence which they could have taken to the authorities if they actually had it.

I am pretty for vigilantism; but only if they are even more thorough in their investigation than the police to be absolutely sure they get the right person. Which only seems to happen in fiction.

Yes, it does. (I hope it goes without saying that I believe pedophilia is wrong.) Vigilantism in general really rubs me the wrong way, but people using it for views (the same way they might use feeding homeless for views) is just really disgusting to me. Many “sting” type operations seem odd to me. Like, if someone’s partner has a friend try and seduce their partner and they end up trying to cheat, but they never actually cheated in any context other than that, I think most people (or at least a lot) would agree that’s a shitty test to put your partner through. I view this in a similar way.

My opinion changes a little when it’s law enforcement doing it and they know the person they’re setting up the operation against has actually done the crimes they’re trying to catch them in. What bothers me the most is when the person that gets caught (be it for pedophilia, buying drugs, prostitution, whatever) hasn’t engaged in those things before. It’s very difficult to me to view that as anything other than entrapment for what was (effectively) a victimless crime. (Because they didn’t actually do the thing they got caught for.)

But, regardless of how I feel about law enforcement doing it, I definitely don’t like vigilantes doing it. Especially for views.

I think the thing I hate the most about these types of discussions is that pointing out things like this often get reduced to “defending pedophiles.” Like, I’m sorry I don’t think we should have extrajudicial beatings of people.

It reminds me of that operation where some vigilantes attempted to buy child prostitutes to save them, but over half of the children they “rescued” were abducted because of the demand the vigilantes generated. And I don’t think any of them ended back up with the families they were taken from. This is a very different scenario, but it helps illustrate how careless vigilantes can cause more problems than they solve.

Kill people. If anyone asks, those people were pedophiles.

This happened to someone I know.

Don’t know the full details, but apparently he ended up going to prison for it even though nothing actually happened, as obviously there wasn’t an actual child involved.

He’s kind of a fuck up, but mostly just kinda stupid and with an alcohol problem.

Is he a predator and therefore one of the most evil people on the planet? I don’t think so.

He’s a fuck up who’s never had success with women, and someone reached out and was kind and interested in him.

idk how to feel about it tbh. I know a lot of people online will just blanket say he’s a monster, but it’s different when it’s a real person you know.

Have any been taken to court? That would seem like an awkward case to make. Among other things, they’d have to prove the victims, who may themselves have no previous charge, meant to attempt what the other side says they were trying to do, all while trying to justify themselves. And in the long term it may be too ugly to not look down on.

Depending on what part of the world these people live in, the actions of these vigilantes might screw up the chance of a successful prosecution.

I’m in the UK and I remember watching a copper interviewed on the the TV asking people not to do it as a lot of the time it results in inadmissible evidence and might even give pedos chance to delete evidence. I think he also said he was aware of multiple instances of the pedo-hunters getting the wrong person at the ‘sting’.

That said, I doubt these pedo-hunters really care about abused kids, it seems mostly about bragging rights and youtube views.

It leads me to believe that the people setting the traps have a hero complex and they’re most likely going to get themselves hurt or another person hurt at some point or another