TIL Children as young as eight can and have been put on the sex offender registry, which lasts the rest of their lives.

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.

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).

The problem isnt the registries per se, it is that they are extremely poorly administered if children are being put on them. The criteria for adding an individual to such registries needs to be strict and with a reasonably high threshold, so that nobody gets on one for things like pissing outside, or accidental exposure, or minors sexting each other, or for accidentally having a few CSAM images that they had downloaded unwittingly etc

I had some involvement with a local registry some years back, and we only inluded adults who physically offended against minors and with a significant age difference, and adults who were actively and deliberately involved in the production and distribution of copious quantities of CSAM. Most had track records involving multiple offences and multiple victims

We'll eventually see this period of history as being as extreme with sex crimes as the 80s were with seeing satanic cults everywhere.

In my state they put you on the sex offender registry if you get caught pissing outside

Which bullshit and we need to fix that. I remember listening to a podcast about the woman who help create that after her son was taken. She says she regrets the program and wish she never created it because of shit like this.

There was a video on the old site, recently, where a Ring doorbell caught an officer interaction. Man reported other man as grooming his daughter, who was convinced to send nudes. Cop said she could be arrested for creating child pornography. This is the stupid world we live in.

According to a podcast I listened to a few years ago, kids have even gone on the sex-offender list for pissing in public. I don't doubt that to be true. It made me a lot more cautious about peeing on a tree late at night when drunk.