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.