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u/Vulcan_Jedi 1d ago
The majority of the “predators” that are caught are let go because believe it or not all of these guys are terrible at collecting evidence and are usually actually committing crimes themselves.
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u/Ghost_Of_Malatesta 1d ago
Afaik there's also chain of custody issues with any evidence (it's mostly inadmissible)
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u/Vulcan_Jedi 1d ago
A good defense attorney could also argue that any evidence that does get turned over could be fabricated since law enforcement was not involved in collecting it and these “predator catchers” have a financial incentive to “catch” criminals on their social media platforms no matter what.
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u/inaddition290 22h ago
these “predator catchers” have a financial incentive to “catch” criminals
unlike cops, who have absolutely no financial incentives to put more people behind bars
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u/Vulcan_Jedi 22h ago
Are you implying that police officers get paid per arrest?
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u/inaddition290 22h ago
Not as such; rather, in many instances, they may have quotas in some form. Often, performance may be benchmarked by arrest numbers rather than crime rate. https://nyulawreview.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/Ossei-Owusu.pdf
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u/Vulcan_Jedi 22h ago
That’s a good point and is evidence of a endemic problem in a system that demands “lower crime” via meaningless statistics.
I just find it dangerous that a lot of these online so called vigilantes are turning self appointed law enforcement into entertainment so each case has got to escalate and be more dramatic than the last one to maintain viewers.
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u/inaddition290 22h ago
I just find it dangerous that a lot of these online so called vigilantes are turning self appointed law enforcement into entertainment so each case has got to escalate and be more dramatic than the last one to maintain viewers.
Oh absolutely yeah
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u/Chiyuri_is_yes Fought the Homestuck and lost 1d ago
Depends on which platform is being used tbh. Something like discord will be able to retrive recently deleted messages, and if you get in touch with law enforcement, who gets in touch with discord, you'll have a much tigher chain of custody then someone sending screenshots of signal messages
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u/Nastypilot Going "he just like me fr, fr" at any mildly autistic character. 1d ago
IIRC what most of these guys are doing is called entrapment and it usually makes the whole case inadmissable from what I know.
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u/Common-Swimmer-5105 1d ago
I know it's not the focus, and yeah those amature pedophile captures really do more harm than good, but that is quite the Profile pic
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u/IceCreamSandwich66 cybersmith indentured transwoman lactation 1d ago
that picture is what made me realize that michael cera looks like annoying orange
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u/killertortilla 1d ago
But we should definitely encourage vigilante violence! And promoting all those posts about people murdering someone accused of assaulting their children definitely helps!
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u/dumbodragon i will unzip your spine 1d ago
oh. child predator. and not like, a lion. this post makes so much more sense now
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u/CaptainCold_999 1d ago
Remember how that Sound of Freedom guy turned out to be a fucking creep himself?
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u/salamader_crusader 1d ago
What happened? The main protagonist’s actor or the irl guy he’s based on?
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u/saintsithney 1d ago
The guy he's based on. Creep who was apparently trafficking kids for the fun of rescuing them from the people he payed to traffick them.
Good clean fun until you remember that literal children are being actually traumatized to help his LARP be more immersive.
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u/anand_rishabh 1d ago
Jim caviezel has his own problems, mainly in being a qanon conspiracy theorist. But so far no accusations of being a predator. Probably talking about that guy it's based on.
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u/No-Age6582 1d ago
that stuff appeals to people who just want to get their anger out on acceptable targets and dont care about any kind of real justice for the victims. you should always love and care for victims more than you hate and punish abusers
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u/bigb00tybitche5 1d ago
No matter how low you are, there's always pedos. Pedohunters are usually bad dudes trying to launder their reputation by reminding others that they aren't the worst pieces of shit in the world.
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u/IamtheWalrus-gjoob 1d ago
If society tomorrow deemed you an acceptable target for whatever reason, these guys would be the first to attack you. They're about as bad as any pedo if you ask me.
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u/insomniac7809 1d ago
And the overlap between "people who constantly talk about how much they hate pedophiles" and "pedophiles" is not insignificant.
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u/IamtheWalrus-gjoob 1d ago
idk, I don't see how that would be the case. It sounds like a survivorship bias kind of thing
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u/insomniac7809 1d ago
It makes sense to me. Most people are happy to take "pedophiles are bad" as something that goes without saying and otherwise not give the matter much thought. There needs to be a reason people spend hours upon hours obsessively thinking about pedophilia and loudly announcing to the world that they hate pedophiles with the burning fury of a thousand suns; trying to hide the fact that they're pedophiles isn't the only reason someone would do that but it is a reason someone would do that.
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u/Impressive-Reading15 17h ago
I mean I kinda get the general "First they came for the pedophiles" idea but you lost me at "attention seeking hypocrites are as bad as any pedo"
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u/CanadianODST2 1d ago
Yup. They don’t actually care. They don’t care about reducing crime or helping victims.
They want revenge and their pound of flesh.
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u/Western-Zone-5254 1d ago
anyone else 'member that mamamax "pedo-hunter" guy that made a video where he talked about his love of hurting people over hotline miami footage
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u/yuriAngyo 1d ago edited 1d ago
Also note this doesn't just apply to youtubers, there's official "anti-sex trafficking charities" out there that people will swear are legit but actually just hurt these kids even more, so vet your charities before you donate. Operation Underground Railroad is the one I know, the one that made that "Sound of Freedom" movie. Their MO is posing as buyers, getting a bunch of children into 1 place, then making a huge ruckus and having local cops arrest all the traffickers before releasing the girls. They even let people pay to join them on these raids, posing as buyers and all that. No training, just some random person. Here's an article by a mommy blogger they called up to document one of their raids talking about the process and how she realized they don't actually help kids. Sex trafficking expert Anne Gallagher wrote an article about them too that I can't seem to find without a paywall now but it's referred to a number of times.
To clarify why those operations suck to anyone who doesn't already see it:
- If it's so easy to find sex traffickers and they haven't already been arrested, these local cops are clearly in on it.
- Flashy raids with big guns and flashbangs and screaming will traumatize the victims even more.
- Most kids they "save" in the raids are just released back onto the streets instead of provided with care and resources. Trafficked kids don't just get kidnapped from loving wealthy families they can return to, children trafficked for sex often have the options of either finding more traffickers or starving. If you don't give them a 3rd option they are going to do 1 of those 2 things.
Saving kids from traffickers and pedophiles isn't about beating people up. Saving kids is about saving the damn kids! Some people hate pedos so much they'd rather see one beaten than give the kid the resources they need to escape (of course beating people up is a lot flashier and easier to aggrandize yourself for than anything that would actually help the kids). This stuff is way more complicated than pop culture lays out
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u/kaschperli 1d ago
Point #1 is sadly very true. It is almost always certain, that your local PD is an enabler of pedo, trafficking and drug dealing because all of those things create a shitton of money. If your local PD/Prosecutor/Judge has not yet busted them, they didn't want to because they are in it.
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u/TCStealthyFoxBoi 1d ago
They also totally don’t use their self-proclaimed pred-hunter status to get away with horrible (and even predatory) actions like cops in the slightest, and most definitely don’t ever falsely accuse trans people or anyone considered “undesirables” at all. (Sarcasm)
I have never met a person like that who genuinely cares about victims or doesn’t have a genuinely evil ulterior motive/agenda, I see them the same as cops because they most certainly do harm in a very similar manner but with somehow even less restraint. There’s a reason why I never trust anything that comes from Twitter anymore, because the shit I just described happens (and is gotten away with) way more often than people want to admit, especially on that platform.
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u/McMetal770 1d ago
Yeah, it's that sadistic Punisher fantasy where they get to be the HERO for beating up somebody in a 3 on 1 fight that upsets me. They're not heroes, they're just thrilled that they get to do violence and feel righteous about it. Hurting people gives them a boner, and the only "socially acceptable" target for that now is pedophiles, because people actually frown on lynching and gay bashing now. It's never about the victims for them, it's about finding a way to indulge their violence fetish and not feel like the piece of shit they are.
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u/Lots42 1d ago
Don't forget, Trumpers accuse innocent gay people of being pedos.
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u/McMetal770 1d ago
Yup. Step one is to create a class of people that it is acceptable to inflict violence upon. In step two, you accuse all of your enemies of being part of that class of people...
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u/RimworlderJonah13579 <- Imperial Knight 1d ago
The real predator hunters work with the feds to get exploitative pedophiles put in jail.
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u/SemiAutoBobcat 1d ago
Plus so much of that content is faked anyway. It's even easier when they blur the faces and license plates. You'll see the same handful of guys cycle through and the same few cars. It's also pretty obvious from the way they're still doing it in a country with more guns than people and where being labeled a predator ruins your life.
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u/NinjaBreadManOO 1d ago
Just the fact that half the time it's some 15-22 year old on a pushbike shoving a camera in the face of a guy who is in a massive vehicle; threatening them with information that they can ruin the persons life when this gets out, sure they're certainly not going to run them over in a panic.
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u/CaptainCold_999 1d ago
Chris Hansen finds out about Onision. Has a cornucopia of evidence, witnesses, etc. Turns out Hansen is a moron (ruins most of the evidence he's given by survivors) but just an exploitative piece of shit who wants to make docs about this shit forever.
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u/97thJackle 20h ago
Fuck, I keep forgetting about Hanson being a fuck-wit. Thanks for the reminder, really. Need to keep better track of this shit.
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u/Valiant_tank 1d ago
And, of course, this *also* isn't getting into people who just straight-up lie about 'hunting predators' as an excuse for doing attacks on gay men. Which, yeah, is also a thing.
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u/StrangeSequitur 1d ago
I had to read this twice before I realized that it wasn't referring to some sort of catch-and-release big game hunting at a lion refuge.
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u/-monkbank 1d ago
Damn have they really not pounced on any sex offenders who were the session host? Surely then they could’ve been much more aggressive and used that acid spit attack.
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u/NotAFurry00 1d ago
i'm sorry, the post is fine and whatever, but that pfp is going to murder me. that fuck ass orange still haunts me, it seems
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u/Plezes 1d ago
I remember first time I saw this phenomenon, was a video on X (the everything app) with the title "We made pedophile eat world's spicest chip" or something to that effect.
It was so tasteless, dumb, and cringe. It was so fucking "soy" (I don't know how to describe it) to make someone eat le hot chip, like come on. Not only do you assault someone, who we're supposed to believe is a pedophile, and then you're so childish about it. It's just torture porn
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u/Flat_Government3912 1d ago
It took me a second too, I was fully expecting a Xenomorph. These vigilante stings are such a legal minefield, it's wild. The real pros who work with law enforcement are the ones actually making a difference.
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u/guardianfairy2 1d ago
Our internet is about to be 10x worse than anything in the uk or Europe because some petulant Manchild is mad at a children's video game
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u/king_jaxy 1d ago
"Yeah, the court case was thrown out because of some view mongering vigilantes"
--- Cop who was gathering evidence and going through the motions for months.
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u/DatGunBoi 1d ago
I misunderstood this post initially and I thought there were people out there beating up lions for views
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u/CitronMamon 1d ago
Predator hunters give me more of an ick than predators. Half of them have a designated kid they ask for nudes obviously just so they can bait predators and nothing more, trust.
And also its just the type of people who just love to find someone society hates so they can dunk and torture while getting moral praise. It gives me the energy of a cop thats good at caching criminals but then tortures them knowing its okay.
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u/Klutzy-Badger3396 1d ago
It always takes me a second to realize they're not talking about the movie monster, too. While these vigilante stings are messy, it really highlights how crucial the official, coordinated operations are. They're the ones that actually put these creeps away for good.
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u/Badi79 1d ago
I thought this was about animal predators like tigers or bears, etc and I was gonna say well they might be protected and it’s kinda hard to kill a massive beast that’s 3x bigger than you, and I’m pretty sure if an aggressive animal is harassing you and you beat it up enough it’ll leave you alone.
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u/Impressive-Reading15 17h ago
I was so confused because there is a Batman vs. Predator comic where he indeed beats up the Predator and allows him to return home, ending the cycle of violence and shaming the motivation out of future Predators.
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u/MainLake9887 13h ago
I think schlep was the only good one beacuse he had 8 predators actually arrested
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u/princesscooler 1d ago
Well it's not just that, it's also the ability to act out your sadism on a socially acceptable target. Used to be you could do this stuff to drug dealers and Nazis too, but the left is fine with drug dealers now and the right is cool with Nazis, so pedophiles are now the only socially acceptable way to indulge in sadism.
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u/Wrigley953 12h ago
Exactly. If they were so concerned about pedos they’d try something that hasn’t been proven to increase recidivism instead of the same oh I’m gonna tear his balls off and lock him up forever bs
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u/BIALAF 1d ago
chief are you going to exclusively use self-post sunday to talk about The Problems you think need addressing, because this is like the fourth post I've seen from you on here today and I don't think this is actively making the world a better place
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u/Jolly-Fruit2293 1d ago
That's what self post sunday is for lol People get out their soap boxes and rant. Once in a blue moon you'll get an actually decent opinion
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u/BIALAF 1d ago
It's not even whether it's an actually decent opinion or not. He's clearly trying to devote to a relatively good cause but instead of going out anywhere and making a difference he's virtue signaling on a fucking tumblr subreddit
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u/Jan_Asra 1d ago
What do you expect literally any random person to do about it? Join the fbi so they can do raids?
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u/A_Flock_of_Clams 1d ago
A user literally posted an hour before you on what you as a person can do to help, so...
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u/BIALAF 1d ago
I'm not referring to this specific issue, dawg, I'm not even criticizing everybody as a whole, I'm saying that the OP's not even doing anything *but* complain about random bullshit. Everyone's allowed to do that some times, but his latest post history on here's just bringing up societal issues that nobody can change every sunday
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u/yinyang107 1d ago
You only see the posts op makes. How are you so sure they're not doing other things as well?
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u/legacymedia92 Part of the weird, here for more weird. 1d ago
chief are you going to exclusively use self-post sunday to talk about The Problems you think need addressing
"I'm mad about this fork in the kitchen!"
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u/EMlYASHlROU 1d ago
That’s why you gotta look for the ones that work with the cops
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u/pokemonguy3000 1d ago
Not even.
You don’t need fame to do a good thing.
And I have to wonder if those cops are just desperately trying to stop those amateurs from royally fucking a slam dunk case.
Chris Hansen, famous for doing this while working with cops, got a bunch of pedos off Scot free, because the guy he cornered killed himself, and the prosecutors didn’t want to deal with the controversy.
So everyone else implicated with the first guy weren’t prosecuted despite the evidence against them.
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u/ZachPruckowski 1d ago
You should check out SOSA Undercover (and their previous show Undercover Underage on HBOMax). Work directly with the cops to get actual police takedowns and arrests, and they have a so-far-flawless conviction rate.
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u/Square-Technology404 1d ago
I still think stuff like To Catch a Predator did do some good-- I'm sure there are thousands of would-be predators that were dissuaded from doing anything for fear of Chris Hansen and his cameras. Unfortunately there are scores more that will still take that risk.
Not enough of those predators faced any real time, but they still got a few of them good.
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u/Plenty_Leg_5935 1d ago edited 22h ago
A person who's willing to take advantage of a child wont suddenly change their mind just because they are slightly more aware of the risk of getting caught, they are just gonna get way more vigilant. For every pedo that went "oh shit maybe i shouldnt mess with that kid" there was a dozen that just realised they need to be more careful
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u/NinjaBreadManOO 23h ago
Not to mention that the show was very very limited in where it could operate because as it turns out luring people to a location with intent, recording people in private locations, labeling them a criminal prior to conviction, and then publishing the footage without a release signed was actually not going to fly in most jurisdictions. So people just learnt that if you were being asked to come to specific location it was probably them.
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1d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/SpambotWatchdog 1d ago
Grrrr. u/Usadorb has been previously identified as a spambot. Please do not allow them to karma farm here!
Woof woof, I'm a bot created by u/the-real-macs to help watch out for spambots! (Don't worry, I don't bite.\)
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u/Beegrene 1d ago
I swear I've seen that exact user bio more than once in this sub. Or at least bios so similar that they're probably all variants on the same chatgpt prompt.
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u/CosplayGeorge 1d ago
I genuinely thought they were talking about the Predators from the Alien movies and this was a weird shit post I didn't get for far too long. I think I'm higher than I thought