Online pedophile activism

Age is just a number, in the same sense that jail is just a house. Pedophilia is a sexual orientation in the way cannibalism is a dietary preference? In most online forums, confessing to being a pedophile is sometimes considered trolling because the implication is that the person may be a danger to any youngsters who use the site, and therefore could expose the site to legal risk. Despite this, there are many websites that have engaged in activism in favour of pedophilia or pederasty, which included the abolition of the age of consent and argue that pedophilia is just another sexual orientation, such as homosexuality or heterosexuality.

Wikipedia
Wikipedia has banned self-identified pedophiles under its but not before much calamity had already taken place on the site.

The English Wikipedia enacted, at the behest of a child protection policy that states "Wikipedia regards the safety of children using the site as a key issue. Editors who attempt to use Wikipedia to pursue or facilitate inappropriate adult–child relationships, who advocate inappropriate adult–child relationships on- or off-wiki (e.g. by expressing the view that inappropriate relationships are not harmful to children), or who identify themselves as pedophiles, will be blocked indefinitely."

The first version of that policy was added by on 27 April 2010. On 4 April 2013, added the language stating that off-wiki advocacy would merit an indefinite block. It would seem that the impetus for this change was this thread.

By 2010, large numbers of pro-pedophile websites (such as NAMBLA and BoyWiki's websites) were banned from Wikipedia, following a Faux News article which reported that the liberal pedo agenda had infiltrated Wikipedia. This was confirmed by the Wikipedians; they also confirmed "All of the links appear in old talk archives or from project page discussions."

Despite this, (former deputy director at the Wikimedia Foundation) has been described by Gawker as "a defender of pedophilia", and takes interest in many subjects which fall under the (now defunct)  Various pro-pedophile websites such as those belonging to the Dutch pedophile group MARTIJN (the Dutch counterpart to NAMBLA) and BoyLinks (which describes itself as "The Internet's most comprehensive listing of boy-related and boylove websites") find his arguments on pedophilia to be coherent with theirs. Also, on his previous humanist.de website, a picture of child pornography was present.

one of the most active enforcers of the child protection policy until her death, favored tolerance towards pedophiles who claim to "fight against their child sexual abuse urges and believe that child sexual abuse is wrong". She also added: "even if they are lying, it's not a problem for this site if they don't openly express pro-child sexual abuse views or engaging in pro-child sexual abuse editing, and so on".

Newgon
Newgon Organization (Newgon.net) is (according to itself) an informal activist organization initially set up at Newgon.com by Daniel Lievre and Jillium on Jun 8, 2007. Newgon, which presently operates from a MediaWiki-based site and has no official membership, was founded after Google's removal of a number of pedophile/"minor attraction" blogs from their blogger platform, and was most active until around 2010 and again after 2021. The organization (in this instance, confirmed by media sources) produces information resources, academic research collections, and "debate" guides relating to MAPs (see below), and pedophilia. It has also hosted forums for discussion of these themes, and private forums to organize "evidence-based" information campaigns.

Newgon was an early proponent of the term "MAP" (Minor Attracted Person) - an identity that includes ephebophiles and hebephiles with pedophiles. While "MAP" (and the body of scientific research surrounding it, see for example in Google Scholar) is now a staple of RW online outrage-mongering and groomer-hysteria, for Newgon, it is likely an attempt to expand their perceived demographic to a substantial minority of the male population. Newgon had semi-successfully infiltrated Wikipedia in the 00s, going on to inspire an edition of Law and Order: SVU ("Hardwired"), and the villain Kevin O'Donnell.

It was only after their editors were kicked off Wikipedia in 2007 and 2008, that significant editing began on NewgonWiki, resulting in a "body of knowledge" that now resembles a serious attempt to "construct a history of MAPs" that rivals both black and gay history. In its more recent incarnation, the organization funds an "independent" chat server, on which members organize Twitter sock trolling campaigns. If only to confirm their symbiotic relationship with the right-wing outrage mob, these have inspired performative outrage within the followings of influencers such as Jordan Peterson, Blaire White, Raheem Kassam and Jack Posobiec, according to various (and sadly, it appears genuine) screens reproduced on their website. Newgon has claimed responsibility for multiple Twitter outrage threads commanding over 2M impressions, and considers the publicity a mark of pride in their attempts to "increase visibility".

BoyWiki
Described by Wikipedia as An interesting variety of its articles were copied onto the anarchist-based wiki imaginatively named Anarchopedia, including articles on the so-called "Child liberation movement" and child molestation. Anarchopedia is not unique in this, and this has led to factional infighting in the radical left community; Maoist Rebel News (Jason Unruhe) described RevLeft as "a Bunch of Pedophile-Zionists". The founder of NAMBLA (David Thorstad) was a lifelong Trotskyite.

Some of BoyWiki's more interesting articles (not moved over to the anarchist website) describe information such as "How not to accidentally out yourself" and a very large article discussing adult-child sex (who would have guessed!). This was created on 8 August 2009, coincidentally after a POV-fork article of the same name was deleted on Wikipedia, in January of that year.

Interestingly enough, the site seems to take a rather positive view of RationalWiki (whilst not mentioning Conservapedia), stating that we are: ... a wiki ostensibly devoted to analyzing and refuting pseudoscience and the anti-science movement, documenting the full range of crank ideas, explorations of authoritarianism and fundamentalism, and analysis and criticism of how these subjects are handled in the media. The site's main blind spot is that it has very little criticism of left-wing authoritarianism.

My enemy's enemy...

It is associated with the "Free Spirits" organization behind BoyChat, described by BoyWiki as "the longest-running boylove community on the World Wide Web." Apparently, some 200–300 posts are created each day, although it's difficult to tell as to how many are genuine "boylovers", or as to whether they are trolls, vigilantes, or law enforcement officials.

The most important function Wikipedia serves is via the pedophilia articles themselves. It is important that they remain fair and unbiased. It is important that they continue to have external links to the support and activist community. AnnabelLeigh.net, also called GirlChat, is the sister site to BoyChat. This site is less active and frequently is down. However, when BoyChat gets taken down by attacks (as happened in late October 2016), GirlChat often remains unaffected and can be a source of information about what is happening with BoyChat.

Rightpedia
Rightpedia admin Hu1 (posting as Fiala1) had defended Children.orain, a site registered with the now-defunct Orain.org by a pedophile. Hu1 described the site as a "small harmless children's Wiki". In fact the creator was banned by Orain staff, describing him as a "pedophile scumbag" and Children.orain has been closely monitored.

Unsurprisingly, being the fashier version of Metapedia, Rightpedia's article on pedophilia only focuses on opposition to Jewish pedophiles and there is not any mention of non-Jewish pedophiles on the page.

8chan
8chan has been described by the The Washington Post as "the more-lawless, more-libertarian, more 'free' follow-up to 4chan." Boards have been created to discuss controversial topics, including pedophilia. While the sharing of illegal content is against site rules, The Daily Dot wrote that boards exist to share sexualized images of minors in provocative poses, and that some users of those boards post links to explicit child pornography hosted elsewhere.

When asked whether such boards were an inevitable result of free speech, Brennan responded, "Unfortunately, yes. I don't support the content on the boards you mentioned, but it is simply the cost of free speech and being the only active site to not impose more 'laws' than those that were passed in Washington, D.C." 8chan at this time had multiple boards dedicated to such material. In August 2015, for a brief period, 8chan was blacklisted from Google Search for containing content constituting "suspected child abuse content". It was later restored to the search engine's listings without explanation.

Administration of 8chan later shifted from Brennan to Jim Watkins and his son, Ron Watkins. Following this, an investigation by Mother Jones alleged that old websites owned by Jim Watkins had domains suggestive of child pornography. Watkins was also dismissive of Brennan's proposals to better police child abuse content on the site, using machine learning. The Watkins administration eventually banned illustrated child pornography on 8chan circa the early 2020s, according to an updated "guidance" page laying out the site's rules against illegal content, which interprets illustrated sexualizations of children as illegal.

4chan
There was one board, /l/ (Lolikon), dedicated to lolicon (illustrated child pornography of young girls) on 4chan as far back as 2003 (the same year the site was founded). Though, it was eventually removed after people posted real-life child porn on it (users were assured that the site's founder was not on some kind of "anti-pedo crusade", however). At least one other board, /sm/ (Shota/Male) was dedicated to shotacon (illustrated child pornography of young boys). These days, lolicon and shotacon are only allowed on /b/, though this rule is regularly disregarded by some posters (as any rule tends to be treated on 4chan). In more recent years, some more seriously organized pedophilia advocacy has occurred on boards such as /pol/, with multiple users citing, with some regularity, other established pro-pedophile websites such as in campaigns to sway opinion. Blatant pedophilia advocacy is technically a bannable offense, at least on /pol/, but is not always enforced.

Egomoral
Egomoral is a website for pedophiles and is chock full of apologia for pedophilia; as well as promoting adult-child sex, the site also promotes polygamy and zoophilia. It has been quoted a few times on Fundies Say the Darndest Things!, much to the revulsion of the commenters. User webwub declared that "age of consent laws conflict with biology" and user Anglebrook makes the claim that 91.4% of men are pedophiles, based on a quiz that the website itself had put up (which falls victim to the spotlight fallacy and selection bias).

Christian Boy Love Forum
The Christian Boylove Forum (CBF) was started in order to give Christian boylovers a space in which to work out their own issues. The "Christian Boy Love Forum" was created following the completely unwarranted prejudice that "boylovers" felt within the Christian community, and from 2000–2002 published a newsletter named Parakelesis, which they claimed contained "informative articles and poetry". The organisation organized a number of meetups between 1998 and 2002, deciding in 2001 that they would allow filthy breeders within their ranks. A variety of choice quotes from these people are available via the Encyclopædia Dramatica.

Caution Click
Caution Click advocates decriminalization of "non-production child pornography" activities, such as possession and distribution of images of children being sexually assaulted.

Straight Talk for Boys About Sex with Males
"The booklet — recently circulated through a Web site for pedophiles — had been written, it said, 'for any boy who is old enough to be able to read it.' Called 'Straight Talk for Boys,' it is an 18-page discussion of sex, particularly between children and adults, from the pedophiles' viewpoint. Such encounters are depicted as harmless, even beneficial. The document criticizes parents and therapists. And it encourages boys to wear Speedo bathing suits and shower naked in public places. But it repeatedly returns to one message: boys should never tell about sex with adults. 'Older boys and men may be frightened about getting caught having sex play with you, because they can be put in jail,' it says. 'So you have to think of ways to 'signal' your interest in another person without openly saying what you want,' adding that 'nobody else can know about what you agree to do.' The booklet comes with instructions, advising pedophiles on how to distribute it. 'The best and safest way is to leave quantities of the booklet in places where boys in the 8 to 14 range can find them, and where adults will not discover them too quickly,' the instructions read. 'Obviously, you don't want to be observed placing the booklets in your chosen locations.' The booklet reflects how pedophiles can use the Internet to advance their interests in the real world. Like many of those efforts, this one involved deception: the booklet does not reveal, for example, that it has been written and distributed by men who are sexually attracted to children, but instead portrays itself as objective fact. – New York Times."

"Ephebophilia"
In certain online circles, including parts of Reddit and the manosphere, some male users openly celebrate their attraction to underage girls in their teens. According to many self-proclaimed "ephebophiles," it's "natural" or a "biotruth" that adult men are attracted to teenage girls, and age of consent laws are an attack on "healthy male sexuality" invented by feminists and older women in order to monopolize the "sexual marketplace". One common refrain is that women lose their attractiveness when they hit "the wall," an alleged age where generally female beauty precipitously declines.

Similar sentiments were voiced by Jeffrey Epstein, the infamous financier and convicted sex offender, in an interview he gave in 2018. In it, he argued that modern taboos against adult men having sex with teenage girls were a "cultural aberration" that flew in the face of much of human history, with the implication that he hoped that one day, laws and attitudes concerning such would be rolled back. He contrasted this with homosexuality, which has been the subject of long-standing taboos dating back over a thousand years, and which is still punishable by death in some countries.