this post was submitted on 31 Mar 2025
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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. (www.nytimes.com)
submitted 3 days ago by Tea@programming.dev to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] ameancow@lemmy.world 33 points 3 days ago (1 children)

100%.

There is an old trope about arsonists, they either become criminals or they become firefighters.

At least with firefighters, we don't have to worry about if the firefighter is going to get the fire in a room alone later.

[–] afronaut@slrpnk.net 18 points 3 days ago (2 children)

There are cases of arsonist fire fighters which is an even stronger analogy.

Those who claim to fight fires are often the ones setting them, so they can be seen as the heroes who extinguish them.

[–] ameancow@lemmy.world 17 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Really good point and in cases like this we should all be a lot more concerned with people who seem obsessive about a given subject. It's not a coincidence that so many crackpot Q-anon "save the children from the demon vampires" nutcases were actually themselves pedos who were caught, or that Q-anon STARTED on a pedophile message board.

[–] frostysauce@lemmy.world 0 points 3 days ago (1 children)

or that Q-anon STARTED on a pedophile message board.

Come again now?

[–] ameancow@lemmy.world 18 points 3 days ago

8-chan was a "less moderated" version of 4-chan where the founders of Q-anon got started, it was a notorious forum for trading child abuse material.