https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/aug/15/digital-grooming-crimes-online-safety-bill-nspcc
Alright, it's not images this time.

Multiple offenses can be levelled against the same person in relation to the same victim. In fact, this is not an unusual practice. We see it all the time. Perhaps, that contributes to these statistics.

The headline is extremely misleading. They mention their statistic is "in wait for the bill", which makes people think of months, or a year, however, they actually have a very wide window of many, many years.

Curiously, it seems they only created this "speaking sexually with a minor" offense in 2017 / 2018. It's hard to extrapolate off that.

Presumably, this flags anyone who speaks inappropriately with a minor. While inappropriate, that might not be someone looking to engage in more sinister activities.

In any case, it's not hard to surmise there are a certain number of crimes on the Internet.

As I've mentioned before, we don't search random homes for dead bodies, nor do we remove the doors off locks to theoretically make it easier to do so.

Also, from the looks of some of the discourse around this, they are catching predators? It seems from reports made to the police?

In one case, the victim attributed their ability to get the police to intervene in a case where someone was trying to extort them, to an online safety program they attended in school.

The criminal was later convicted for his crimes.

This begs the question as to why these people aren't advocating for more countries to run such programs.

Instead, they lobby for pieces of legislation which are disproportionate, bad for human rights, and are very likely, ineffective.

The article also uses sensationalistic language to try to make it appear as if the process of getting someone's confidence is easier than it really is. Given the framing around it, this isn't terribly surprising.

Lots of assertions about a very dubious bill (and what it "might" do) from lobbyists asking the government to "do something".

There's a random line complaining about "AI" (whatever that is supposed to mean), even though it is irrelevant to this, because got to have that in there. Again, human rights.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PA_Media
"PA Media" wrote this article. Who is that? The biggest shareholder is a very right wing company, although I presume it isn't just them.

Noting that staff for social networks mention that victims are typically of an older cohort... Hmm.