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My sister was nearly put on the registry when she was 15 for slapping a friends butt in school who had decided she didn’t want to be friends with her anymore but hadn’t exactly communicated it. She chose to communicate that by accusing her of SA.
My sister avoided the registry by a mix of community service and counseling, but I always thought it was wild that she was at risk while under 18.
You aren't old enough to consent to sex but you are old enough to be charged with sex crimes. Bizarre
I don't really think it's bizarre. Sex crimes and consensual sex are two very different things. The issue here is that some people seem to be facing consequences that last a lifetime for 'crimes' that seem pretty insignificant. But if someone raped another person you'd expect them to face consequences even if they are underage when committing the offence.
So, some context as to why this happens: the US does not give a fuck about how old someone is if they're involved in the production of csam, nor does it care if it was voluntary. This means that, in the eye of the law, a teenager sending nudes to their boyfriend is just as much of a pedophile as the man shooting child porn; and their boyfriend is just as much of a pedophile for viewing and possessing them. I'm guessing that OP likely posted this after reading an article like this: https://apnews.com/article/child-images-police-columbus-cf377933b5be55297cf88c923b8f0b92
It doesn't stop there though. I have been told to never, ever try to submit evidence to the FBI of someone being a child predator. The reason for that is because the FBI does not give a fuck. They will prosecute you as a predator, even if you're just trying to do the right thing. Combine that with the fact that an accusation of being a predator is life-ending, even if you're found innocent, and it encourages people to destroy evidence and stay quiet.
Finally, if there's any csam on your PC, whether or not you're aware of it, regardless of whether you received it voluntarily (like temp browser files from accidently viewing a hijacked website with cp on the page), you are automatically a pedophile in the eyes of US law. This is especially destructive when it comes to a video, where each frame is counted as an individual piece of csam. This means you can potentially be taken to court for hundreds or thousands of pieces of child pornography because someone embedded a clip of cp in a movie.
Fuck pedophiles, but the law needs an overhaul. In addition to the number of people who got put on the registry as kids, there are probably a lot of people who've gotten fucked because they were legitimately trying to do the right thing.
Edit: I could be wrong about this, the law may have changed or I may have been misinformed. It's been a long time since I was told this, but it's in line with the article I linked and the one OP linked, so it's unfortunately far too believable to disregard. If there are any legal experts who can counter this, please speak up.
Edit 2: someone has replied telling me that I'm at least partially wrong, which I'm happy to hear. Still, stay safe. It seems like using csam to fuck with people, especially those in marginalized communities, is becoming more popular. Report it, clear your cache and/or temp files directory (whichever is associated with the program you had the misfortune of viewing it through), and move on. Or, to put it another way, treat it as if you accidently picked up an unshielded bar of plutonium by the side of the road. Put it down, leave the area, report it to authorities, thoroughly clean yourself off (then maybe go to the hospital).
Um, yeah, most of this is made up.
If you encounter CSAM on the web, just report it to https://report.cybertip.org/ and clear your cache. You don't have to fill out all the detail fields; just give 'em the URL that linked to it.
But mostly, don't go looking. Don't try to be a brave vigilante willing to subject yourself to awfulness in order to protect children. That's not how it works. If you go looking, folks will assume you're participating.
I was mainly talking about submitting evidence, like a discord screenshot of someone posting cp. I might still be wrong there though.
Edit: like, the issues Lemmy has had with people spamming csam is an example of how someone might come across it unintentionally. Someone might feel compelled to actually submit a screenshot or the video itself as evidence to the FBI, which I've been told is a very bad idea.
NCMEC is the legally designated place to report it. Don't go to any more trouble than you need to. There are folks whose job it actually is to track this stuff down, take it down, and prosecute the people creating it. Let them do their job.