this post was submitted on 20 Nov 2025
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Imagine getting Nuremberg'ed for playing as Germany in HOI4 (and trying the historical route).
I mean, beyond the obvious that child abuse is never condonable, this particular action circles back to questions like "does video games cause violence?" and the role of the state in administering justice.
The below aren't mutually exclusive
HOI4 is an interesting choice for an analogy here.
It's unanalagous in that HOI4 sanitized itself of the Holocaust specifically so people wouldn't be able to roleplay committing xenophobic genocide, unlike the game in question which is specifically designed to let you roleplay a pedophile rapist preying on the already abused.
However it is tangentially analogous in the sense that anime tends to have a bit of a Nazi bar issue with pedophilia thanks to people (who I'm gonna have to assume are well intentioned) unintentionally making room for pedophiles to exist and operate with arguments just like the ones you're making here.
Of course video games don't cause violence. The only people interested in the pedophile rapist roleplay visual novel, though, are very likely people with an interest in pedophilia. The government is right to monitor and remove people who acquire CSAM instead of going to therapy from society and it isn't overreach to protect children in this way. Is there a potential for such a system to be abused by the government? Yes, of course, but such is true of any system. Preventing government abuse and corruption is separate from stopping the distribution of CSAM and protecting children from predators.
Fair. Follow-up questions:
I see the concern that pedophiles continue to abuse children. There's degrees of handling the problem, up to and including measures like Chat Control and Britain's Online Safety Act. Now, do the people have the appetite to be subject to those measures?
Which leads to...
I don't trust governments eroding privacy and surveilling its people because of predators. They pass those types of measures with other goals in mind.
There is no shortage of real CSAM creators to go after. Shouldn't we prioritize going after those people ahead of drawings of cartoon characters?
Dismissing pedophilic hentai as "cartoon drawings" is exactly the kind of behavior that promotes the Nazi Bar for pedophiles phenomenon I mentioned in my post. Stop making safe spaces for pedophiles.
To address your reply, I don't think those actions are mutually exclusive. Both are CSAM and should be treated as such.
I'm not arguing against banning the hentai from websites or stores or whatever.
Police resources are limited. CSAM is rampant online. How many abused children have been made to wait for rescue while cops and the court were busy going after the guy who looks at cartoons?
I listened to the Daily podcast back in 2019 where Michael Babaro said there is so much CSAM online that the authorities had to prioritize infants 1 and under. So imagine my surprise to see resources and time spent going after drawings.
This guy wasn't nailed on the CSAM game alone. The game is an indicator that he's a person who is going to be consuming other CSAM.
Of course there should be more resources dedicated to preventing child abuse. That's the issue, and not one likely to be addressed, in the US, while the highest office in the nation is filled by a pedophile. But this case didn't occur in the US and the prioritization of which CSAM to remove first shouldn't be a discussion, but rather it should be the allocation of more resources.
It's not "just drawings". It's still child sexual abuse materials.
I'm going to make the, possibly incorrect, assumption that it's more drawings of CSAM. If I'm wrong though then he should obviously be locked away.
That's not to say drawings of CSAM aren't disgusting or should be allowed online, absolutely no website should be hosting that stuff.
You can say 'more resources needed', but in austerity brained Europe, and tax averse US that's not going to happen.
In a world where authorities are letting 5 years year olds being tortured slide to protect the infants being tortured. There is a pretty clear hierarchy of priorities there.
My concern is that going after this person engaging in CSAM of drawings was easy, and going after the ones engaging with real children was difficult due to encrypted distribution channels. We're letting the big fish rub rampant and focusing on the smaller easier to catch fish.
I can see your point and perhaps I'm too idealistic to think the relevant authorities can walk and chew gum at the same time, but I am admittedly idealistic.
Yeah sorry but people who jerk off to the pedo rape game are definitely pedos.
I am a good thought haver and I signal this by telling everyone bad thought havers should be executed
yeah.. ..there's something so fundamentally fucked about conceptual suppression, and I don't think it makes the real issue - actions that harm others - better.
Like, I keep thinking of how deeply Christianity and Catholicism want to get in your pants and tell you what and when you should and shouldn't be thinking this or that. ..and it ends up making a system that helps to obfuscate and provides cover for that very thing.
Now, in tits following example, I absolutely am not suggesting that being gay is bad. But, in religions (Christianity being the prime example) where it is considered bad, it's always the loudest, most virtuos signallers that end up being found to be involved in closeted gay relationships.
I guess, in some ways, there's just no better cover than to signal that you're a good thought haver, and that bad thought havers should be executed.
And pedos deserve to be in jail because they looked played a game? Or in general? Shouldn’t we just save the taxpayer’s time and send them to the camps?
You are right, but being a pedofile should not be a crime. It's a sexual deviation from the norm, maybe a disgusting and/or dangerous deviation, but it's nothing different than coprofilia.
If the pedofile do not act on his/her desires and there is no illegal material or action involved, just let him/her be.
Keep an I on him/her, of course, seek counseling, but act only of and when the perversion is growing out of control.
Same thing with drugs: if you can afford them, good for you (and welcome to high society). If you can't afford them and you screw your relationship over it, fuck you and seek counsel. But if you start to steal, kidnap, or hurt people in anyway, that's where the line must be drawn.
Sorry, but pedophilia is vastly different than coprophilia and other outlandish fetishes in the scale of harm to others and the inability for it to ever be consensual.
I could talk about how pedophiles also tend to seek positions where they hold power dynamics over children, even ones who don't act on their desires, increasing the likelihood of abuse, but I think your point is moreso about a hypothetical pedophile who doesn't act on their desires, doesn't acquire CSAM, doesn't surround themselves with children and simply struggles internally with their fetish and actively seeks professional help on how to maintain a safe life for themselves and others.
Yes, I suppose that person doesn't need any government intervention in their lives outside of the monitoring you suggested.
That said, this particular article is about a man who did seek out, acquire and consume CSAM instead of seeking therapy. The government detected this and removed him from society such that he cannot be a threat to children. That sounds about right.
I'm not sure if the Norwegian prison system is more focused on reform vs punitive measures, though I would hope that it should go without saying that the former is always ideal and the latter isn't actually helpful to society.
I don't know.. don't all people with extreme sexual fetishes that aren't culturally acceptable end up, by fear of cultural reprisal, attempting to control the circumstances by which they fulfill their desires?
Like, a necrophiliac (not that that's really that common) might work in a circumstance where they could get away with that. If someone were to find out, they would try to control the outflow of that knowledge (probably unsuccessfully). By, firing a person, or engineering some other way they could discredit the person.
..and if someone only got off on animal shit, they would try to get an animal to shit on them. ..and if that animal was like "I suddenly can talk", the person would be compelled by fear of cultural reprisal to gain a position is power over the animal to silence the animal, if the animal also couldn't be trusted to keep their secrets.
I'm not saying that to mitigate pedophilia, but I just don't think the underlying drives are dissimilar to other fetishes. I do, however, think the circumstances are dissimilar. That is to say, I think the underlying drives are similar to other fetishes, but the stakes are massively higher for all parties involved, and the odds of your secret coming out are massively higher.
I don't think pedophilia is uniquely "evil". like, I consider extreme NPD, Sexual Sadism Disorder, and coercive paraphilia to be far more "evil". ..and people with those disorders coins potentially choose children just because of their vulnerability, and not even due to any intrinsic attraction to children. but that's not pedophilia.
But, I do think that pedophilia is uniquely high-stakes for all parties involved, and that the cultural demonization of it simply raises those stakes. Of course, we still need to stop it as a culture. It can't be culturally accepted. But, I, for one, on the receiving end of that, would have talked to people had the societal reaction not been so extreme. As a child, I knew how grave it was societally - and couldn't talk to anyone because I knew the resultant social explosion would only further erode my own sense of personal autonomy.
I mean, I didn't think of it in those terms, but my heart correctly felt the social situation. ..and I navigated it alone, except for one random person in my neighborhood that I was able to talk to, once, who just listened, and talked to me about it, and prioritized my feelings, and my understanding. Their consideration of me would not have been societally condoned at the time, and now verges on being illegal, but I will be forever grateful to them for standing up for my autonomy, and helping me understand, without getting otherwise involved (though, they would have, had I needed that).