How often does tracking child abuse imagery lead to preventing actual child abuse? Out of all the children who are abused each year, what percentage of their abusers are tracked via online imagery? Aren't a lot of these cases IRL/situationally based? That's what I'm trying to determine here. Is this even a good use of public resources and/or focus?

As for how you personally feel about the imagery, I believe that a lot of things humans do are gross, but I don't believe we should be arbitrarily creating laws to restrict things that others do that I find appalling.. unless there's a very good reason to. It's extremely dangerous to go flying too fast down that road, esp with anything related to "terror/security" or "for the children" we need to be especially careful. We don't need another case of "Well in hindsight, that [war on whatever] was a terrible idea and hurt lots and lots of people"

And let's be absolutely clear here: I 100% believe that people abusing children is fucked up, and the fact that I even need to add this disclaimer here should be a red flag about the dangers of how this issue is structured.