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.

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"

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?

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?

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.

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."

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

they mistaken quite a few people.

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.

I’m going to be honest, I’m suspicious of every single ‘pedophile hunter’. They are going after a demographic that people will not rush to defend, even if innocent.

Also, these ‘hunters’ probably have something shady going on in their own lives, and this is some form of projection that they also profit off of.

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

In Austria the 'pedophile hunters' targeted gay men who were not pedophiles. If 'pedophile hunters' would actually care about their cause, they would storm the next church...

Great. Just dump anyone you dislike as a "pedophile" and then it's a free for all.

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.

Vigilantes taking the law into their own hands with violence is always a sign of a healthy society. It also never leads to tragedy.

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.

I’d make a guess they’re getting violent because the legal system can’t do anything with their compromised evidence. Instead of realizing they’re not the people qualified to do this work, they’re just doubling down and “handling it themselves.”

Have they tried looking in churches and the Republican party?

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

Only one thing to do: set two pedophile hunters up on a date.

Republicans and Church leaders everywhere are terrified.

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

Didn't an entire TV show get into some serious hot water for doing this sort of thing which resulted in someone committing suicide while filming an episode? These people are potentially putting themselves in serious danger if they corner a pedo who feels like they have nowhere to run or anything left to lose.

As a main communitymember on a site with chats used by a huge amount of kids, I have seen how the internet makes it very easy, compared to oldentimes, for pedos to be in areas high in children. One of the kids there often complains about pedos and asked me to help remove them. So, with kids being a defenseless flock of animals, there ARE kids who then take a Defender role and they become the ouster of pedos. Also noteworthy is, right before I emailed an official pedocatching organization, the kid I was helping got in a confrontation and spilled the antipedo plans; which alerted the pedos and spoiled the plan. So the issue with kids doing high stakes things is they are mentally still children.

overall, pedos in kid areas, thanks to the internet, feels, to me, also on the rise. And those areas SHOULD have the pedos removed in an organized acceptable fashion; and that that doesn't happen causes some Defender kids to think they need to do it themselves.

imo get better real official pedo prevention measures up in kid spaces to reduce vigilantiism.

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

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.

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

Not advocating for all this, but if they really cared, couldn't they just run down the registered sex offender list and start with the multiple convictions?

Is this an angelfire website in the 90's? Who the hell thought a background amalgamation of moving images was the best way to present printed media?

I just can't with these websites anymore. I find it almost impossible to read when there's a embedded video as it is.

paedophiles are horrible people but dateline culture was the worst thing to happen to pop culture lexicon

I wish I hadn't gone down this rabbit hole, but according to study data, 1 in 6 people want to touch kids. https://theconversation.com/a-survey-found-1-in-6-men-admit-sexual-feelings-for-children-so-is-paedophilia-increasing-218124

Did people not watch The Hunt?

Let’s be real- we know who they’re catching. I’m fine with this. Keep on doing whatever to MAGA trash.