Also, the almost universal knee-jerk response that we have as a society broadly to child predation makes a helluva mask for trampling on the rights of others and making a scapegoat that will be condemned in the public court long before any charges are brought up. The absolute ease and temptation of creative editing and a thirst for views can make the producers of this content work harder to portray events out-of-context.

I’m sure there are plenty of actual predators who are worried about being hit with a sting, but I have seen more than a handful clips of these rogue pedo-hunters going after like, 21-year-old boys and their 17-year-old girlfriends, and people who looked genuinely confused and seemed railroaded into meeting someone.

I know this message will never stick with the wildly reactionary and emotional viewership who needs to hear it, but we make vigilantism illegal for a damn good reason, and just because Dateline managed to stay above the waterline for the most part, that doesn’t mean some operation of randos you know nothing about on youtube have both the best intentions and the legal acumen to actually make a difference. They may well be making the problem worse by setting up situations where stings against child predators could become outlawed.