[RichardCoulter]

A lot of them clearly have learning difficulties so see nothing wrong with it because they either don't realise the seriousness of what they're doing, or have the mind of a child themselves (with the added complication of the sexual urges of an adult).

Obviously they need to be stopped from doing it, but the merciless public bullying for 'likes' (money) appears to be the main drive for a lot of them.

Some of them have found out the hard way that it would be
themselves that ended up in court.

Of course, this doesn’t apply to all of them, but the amateurish way that they do this often leads to the paedophiles (though most that i've seen are hebophiles) walking free. True paedophiles are unlikely to find children they can meet to abuse online.

Perhaps they should only be allowed to do it with police accreditation after training & passing a test/exam as a compromise? It's turned out that a fair few 'hunters have a criminal record themselves and some were probably doing it to cover up the fact that they had an interest in underage people themselves. I suspect that the drive for some is a form of revenge because they were sexually abused themselves. It's known that this screws people up as adults, so how long before someone takes the law into their own hands?

However, this seems unlikely as there are currently calls for it to be made an offence to pretend to be a child online.