Social media sites can't decide how to handle 'non-offending' pedophiles

When Ender Wiggin was banned from Twitter last December, it wasn't because he was a far-right troll or Nazi sympathizer. In fact, Wiggin had an army of pizzagaters harassing him all hours of the day, insisting he kill himself right up until the moment his account was disabled on December 14. That's because Ender - aka @enderphile - is the pseudonym of a "non-offending" or "anti-contact" pedophile: someone who is attracted to children, but claims to be against adult-child sex and child pornography. Inside that community, he's known as the unofficial leader, and claims he's been using social media to reduce the stigma associated with pedophilia, showing other pedophiles they can live lives without offending. [...]

There's at least one group that has come to the pedophiles' defence, and one of the main voices in that group has been Dr. Cantor. He, along with "clinical and forensic psychologists, sexologists, sociologists, child protection workers, journalists, writers, and digital rights advocates," published a joint letter in response to Ender and other non-offending pedophiles' removal. [...]

Of course, not everyone agrees with them. Signy Arnason, associate executive director of the Canadian Centre for Child Protection and Cybertip, is one of those people. Her organization was built specifically to fight online child exploitation, and she argues you don’t help kids by letting pedophiles onto their sites. Sure it's important to manage pedophilia and show people struggling with their attractions that they don't have to offend, but Twitter, Arnason said, isn’t the place for it. [...]

On December 12, British tabloid The Sun published a piece exposing Twitter for "letting pedophiles openly promote their perversions - because it says discussing the sick fantasies is not illegal." The story named several accounts describing themselves as non-offending, and brought them to MPs, who unsurprisingly said that "Twitter must suspend the accounts." Two days after The Sun article, many of those same non-offending pedophiles logged on to Twitter to find their accounts had been suspended for "suspicious behaviour," a technique used to remove bots, instead of someone who's broken a rule.

source: Article 'Social Media Sites Can't Decide How to Handle 'Non-Offending' Pedophiles' by Jackson Weaver; www.vice.com/amp/en_ca/article/zmwn43/social-media-sites-cant-decide-how-to-handle-non-offending-pedophiles; VICE; 8 February 2018