xyz1234999

No... does it look like I did somewhere? Ah well...

there’s a pattern of escalation with people and they tend to accumulate collections and many escalate to actual behavior

I was curious about this. I did find some research here: https://www.suojellaanlapsia.fi/en/post/csam-users-in-the-da... (2021)

That paper states

Traditional research on individuals who use CSAM is often inherently biased as it has focused primarily on convicted and known offenders.

and appears to be directly trying to avoid that bias, which is good to see.

Isn't there still some bias here though? They only got answers from 1. people who were using a dark web search engine with ads, 2. felt the need to click a "Help us to help you" link, 3. were willing to discuss the topic with strangers on the web. Only (3) was (almost) acknowledged in the Limitations section.

They concluded that "Many CSAM users are not just viewers" and, while "many" could mean any number, I think readers would probably take it to mean something like 30% (shown in graphs) which isn't indicated by their data.

Furthermore, the "not just viewers" conclusion is from a question about "seeking direct contact with children through online platforms". I'm not sure why they didn't more directly ask if respondents took action towards abusing children, with the inspecific "direct contact" qualifier and very specific qualifier "through online platforms". I wonder what the results would have been if they removed "direct" and "through online platforms" from the question.

Admittedly I don't know a lot about statistical techniques! Has there been other research, or do you know what the police agency was basing their explanation on?