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.
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.
Hell, isn’t that what happened to a shitload of those Perverted Justice/To Catch a Predator stings? Most of it got tossed in court and guys walked.