I was listening to a podcast on moral philosophy (wouldn't you wanna be as cool as me??), and one suggestion that's stuck with me was the morality of, trigger warning,

As in, would we as a society want to permit such things, knowing that they could potentially save humans from actual harm if they offer an outlet that scratches an itch? On the other hand, would they bring forth more harmful desires in a greater number of potential perpetrators, leading to even more harm?

Anyway, I'm glad it's not my job to contemplate such disturbing topics.

The underlying behavior is the problem though. While substitutions could potentially be made available, this isn't the same as drug addiction. The reality is that while a pedo could be satiated with a drop in replacement for a time (and possibly indefinitely), there is a very real risk that after a while they're not satisfied with pretending and could quickly jump to the real thing in a split second. The due course, in my mind, is either modifying the depraved behavior or removing the person from society. While drug addiction can be a vice that doesn't inflict harm on the rest of society (ie an addict is potentially able to silo their use from the rest of society), pedophilia is always a crime with a victim. The entire purpose of the situation is ensuring that no one becomes a victim of sex crimes, especially minors, and it is too great a risk to allow in any form.

Let's compare it with adult pornography. Does the consumption of adult pornography remove the desire to have sex with another adult in the long term? Or does it reinforce the sexually desirable characteristics of adults?

What do you know of the current methods. Where did this information come from? I’d really like to see it. You spoke with such knowledge, you must have the data to make it up, right?

I'm pretty sure that this is not true. I'd love to see sources.

There was some research before the ongoing AI-panic, focusing on hentai instead. As it is as "harmless" as the AI-generated content.

And I do recall that at the time there were voices in research making the point that the consumption of material did not have correlation with actually reducing the urges. So this seems highly unlikely.

Current mental help methods for pedophiles include acceptance of their desires as normal, just not something to act on IRL.

I am not aware of the research in this area although I have a minor psych background so that's interesting and makes sense in hindsight. My understanding is that a large part of the compulsion is driven by guilt, shame, feelings of worthlessness, prior victimizations of themselves, etc. Essentially trying to gain a sense of power by taking it from those more vulnerable than them, like an abuser beating their spouse because someone at work put them down. So it makes sense to encourage a sense of power and lessen any sense of guilt and shame.

On a side note, I can't imagine having their name plastered everywhere does anything but trigger the compulsion to re-offend. Maybe when we advance more as a society, we can separate individuals into categories of has-offended and child-attracted, with the former being on a public danger list and the latter having frequent discreet visits by social workers and mandatory counselors, etc. To lessen the chance of offense and possibly start helping them before they get to the offense stage (those that were ever going to offend.)