[user104658]

Originally Posted by Kizzy

You are presuming it is the same groups that operated in a violent manner that have legitimised themselves today... but you don't have any evidence of that.

There is a lot of public support for these kind of sting and the evidence is proving to ensure convictions, the police are now engaging with these groups to maintain best practice. That has to be the way forward now with regulated groups affiliated with their neighborhood policing teams.

I don't have a problem with the groups who refuse to be regulated by the police being disbanded, however if social media continues as a way for predators to reach children they will continue to operate better it be in conjunction with the police than not.

Of course its the same groups, have you ever watched the live streams? They might not be throwing punches but they're still highly aggressive. You're also still willfully ignoring the point about mistakes being made and innocent people being caught in the crossfire of amateurs... Which does happen.

It's a dangerous, slippery slope and it's naively optimistic to assume that this style of... Ahem... "community policing" will be limited sexual predators in the long run. I get that it's a highly emotive topic, the fact that children and teens are groomed and abused is horrific, but I personally believe that emotions and outrage running high on this topic clouds peoples rational judgement on whether or not vigilantism in general is something we want to accept. "Well not for most things but in this special case its OK" isn't really a sensible answer. You can't half-open the door to this sort of thing. I'm not OK with any form of social media mob justice, and so I can't be OK with this.