Technology

I'll just give an example.

Recently, when discussing defederated instances, I've seen an interesting picture: people cheered defederating instances of Nazis and...pedophiles.

An average person would see no issue here. Right, one more terrible group banned! Take those perverts down! But there's a catch that I discovered quite a while ago, and it's a rabbit hole like no other.

• First, pedophile is not a child molester. We equate the two wrongly all the time, and those words became synonymous.
• Second, pedophilia is an immutable trait; unlike with Nazis, no one can decide to stop being one.
• Third, many of the pedophile instances, including those massively banned, actually feature anti-contact pedophiles, i.e. those specifically dedicated to never ever touch or interact with a child in any inappropriate way; said instances also generally prohibit any forms of child sexual imagery or only allow fictional drawings. And early research suggests it actually helps them. We brought up some reads and scientific articles on the matter throughout discussion. Conclusion: there are uncertainties, but it seems to work in protecting kids and reducing suicide rates.

And when you see something like that, you clearly understand that there's a lot of things in the world people still heavily misunderstand, while feeling certain about the position they didn't have 5 minutes to research on, and that people are already on the slippery slope, banning groups they didn't have time and effort to comprehend. And there's a lot more of that than just pedophiles, this is just a very bright example that will probably make most of those reading this uncomfortable and will illustrate the concept best.

Also, I'm full aware that most people will likely choose to downvote this, not comment anything and end up thinking I support child molesters (hell no, if you support child molestation go get some mental health asap, fucking kids is very bad)