I keep seeing videos lately of grown men posing as children online and baiting individuals to public spaces and either assaulting them or recording/exposing them for content. While I don’t mind the idea of a predator being outed, the idea of grown adults posing as children online seems unsavory to me. Especially if their end goal isn’t to protect children, and is to provide content for views.
Obviously, being a child predator is wildly immoral and illegal and their actions are not what’s being debated.
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.
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.
No
It’s the same as seeing a person rob an elderly person in the street, and kicking the shit out of them.
If they didn’t rob the person or have a sexual conversation with someone who might be a minor, there would be nothing to expose.
It’s the same as seeing a person rob an elderly person in the street, and kicking the shit out of them.
Not really, because it’s not a random occurrence, but one they’re actively trying to bait. It’s more like dressing someone up as an elderly person with a clearly visible full wallet and having them walk laps through a dangerous neighborhood until someone tried to rob them.
So unless someone was willing to rob an old person, this wouldn’t be a problem.
Opportunity makes the thief. These people are intentionally trying to get people to commit a crime that might have never otherwise have happened, just so they can beat someone up and/or create content for their channels. That is morally wrong.
People have agency dude.
That goes for both sides. If that agency leads you to provoke a crime and beat someone up for content, that’s pretty fucked up.
Yeah if someone needs an ulterior motive to beat up a pedo, they are the gross one.
They should do it without fanfare and showmanship.
I guess that is one way to look at it. They never actually talked to a minor, just were led to believe they did. Still scummy fucks, but technically never committed a crime in that instance.
Conspiraing to commit crimes is a thing you can be charged for. Few if any people get away with crimes they planned just because they got stopped before they can do them.
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there’s a part of me that wonders if those predators would find another target if the decoy “child” wasn’t presented to them
If these idiots are meeting kids to try to abuse at a Wal-Mart, they are more than likely not smart enough to entice actual minors in other settings.
But they acted on their desire though. How would you know if they haven’t before?
Would you rather children be used as the bait?
That’s a false dichotomy. I’d rather they not have to do it at all.
While I don’t mind the idea of a predator being outed, the idea of grown adults posing as children online seems unsavory to me.
It’s what you said.
Mate, nothing in that sentence suggests they want children to be used as bait
That’s not how I read it.
Vigilantism is never the answer. In pretty much every case the vigilante has far less noble motivations than they claim to have. Just look at the constant screeching about “groomers” by US conservatives.
If we had a Justice system instead of a Legal system it may be. But there is no justice in the system when money or power start to show their faces.
The only justice left is the justice you can take yourself.
Are you Ted Kaczinski?
Is that the only reason you’d beat up a pedophile?
Arguing mobb justice over our legal system is just dumb. We had mobb justice during Jim crow and how did that turn out?
You do you, but you’re not overthrowing the fascists installing themselves with non vioence. Never happened in history.
but you’re not overthrowing the fascists installing themselves with non vioence.
That’s also not what this conversation is about.
The alternative to vigilantism is letting the courts and cops handle it. The courts and cops have been filled with those people. It’s exactly what this conversation is about. If the system was just there would be no need for external actions. That was the idea of the first sentence of my first comment.
Solving violence with violence doesn’t ever work.
To quote Bayard Rustin: “If we desire a society of peace, then we cannot achieve such a society through violence. If we desire a society without discrimination, then we must not discriminate against anyone in the process of building this society. If we desire a society that is democratic, then democracy must become a means as well as an end.”
Solving violence with violence is literally what the government does as soon as it’s at an impass. Weather its cops, military, or politicians vioence is how the world currently works, people just freak out when its not their state doing the violence. The state often times ‘solves’ even non violence with violence. How were the recent protestors cleared off college campuses for a softball example? Private individuals are far easier to hold accountable than cops as is consistently proven in court. If you’re worried about unaccountable violence, look first to the state.
I feel you. It sounds like you’re saying “the way the world currently works” is broken. So why do more of the same and keep it that way? The world needs a new way to work. Let the old way die out, emulate a new way.
The question is, would these people be predators if people didn’t bait them into it? If they are doing this for “content” or some sense of moral judgement, then they have an incentive to push people into these things more than they originally would.
I can imagine the following scenario being common (to the point at which I wouldn’t be surprised if there is a tutorial for it somewhere):
- Find someone online who has serious mental health problems or cognitive impairment.
- Emotionally manipulate them into saying or doing something nasty that they wouldn’t otherwise do.
- Invite them somewhere public and humiliate then online for content.
- Congratulations! Not only have you managed to ruin someone’s life, you’ve done it in a way that you get to feel morally superior as well.
Target some marginalised group as well, and you can also justify hatred towards them and show everyone that your group is better!
A lot of the people they bait do not seem as if they are cognitively competent
THAT is different. Bullying a mentally disabled person is the wrong thing.
The caregiver for the person should be involved in their online activities if they are vulnerable. They should also be taught about being safe online.
The question is, would these people be predators if people didn’t bait them into it?
The CIA has been doing this ever since 9/11 - “baiting” cognitively impaired people into doing “terrorism.”
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.
Vigilantism is wildly unhelpful to the proper authorities, at best, you’ve put yourself in a position of immediate escalation with someone who is clearly able to be presumed as capable of heinous crimes of the violent variety, at worst, you’ve spoiled a years long investigation by showing the hand to the target that people have started to catch on to who they really are, allowing them to book it to a no extradition country.
Look into the Snowtown Murders for a true story about vigilantes who profess to want to kill pedophiles. It doesn’t end well. Only actual idiots truly believe violence is how things should work, and you really want smart people to be the arbiters of justice to the greatest extent that is possible.
Vigilantism is illegal for a couple of good reasons.
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.
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.
