CLAIM: MOST OR ALL ONLINE ACTIVITY DOCUMENTING "MAPs" OR "MINOR-ATTRACTED PEOPLE" IS A HOAX PERPETUATED BY 4CHAN, THE MAGA MOVEMENT OR RUSSIA.

FACT CHECK: FALSE ❌

There has been a lot of drama on social media regarding right-wing trolls pretending to be MAPs, apparently to discredit Bluesky, annoy LGBT people, or 'own the libs'. It is clear that some of the widely-quoted accounts mentioning MAPs on Bluesky are right-wing trolls. However, there are also many more real MAPs using the service to promote the MAP rights cause.

Mu joined Bluesky earlier in the week to connect with MAPs on social media, promote MAP understanding, and draw attention to the excellent articles posted on our website. Responses included the typical woodchipper memes, incitement to suicide, and other hateful messaging, as is to be sadly expected. We can tolerate that, but there's one thing we really need to clear up: we are not a hoax organization.

As stated in our principles, Mu exists to promote MAP visibility, equality, rights, and the reform of attitudes toward young people. We do post very provocative articles, such as our recent piece on the historic connection between MAPs and the LGBT community. We are acutely aware of how such articles are received, and we do lean into the drama a bit to get people to read, but we are quite serious about our goals, and we have great confidence in the quality of our work.

The recent posts on Reddit denouncing Mu work as a psyop are ridiculous, much like the claims that the MAP movement started with 4chan trolls in 2017. Mu's Brian Ribbon used the term 'minor-attracted person' back in 2007, and it was endorsed by MAP-founded group B4U-Act later that year. Mu is an aggressive activist organization that regularly contacts the media (including hostile parties) about our work, and we have been quoted in national and local news in relation to our defense of a planned camping trip for MAPs.

Despite being co-opted by trolls, either as a joke or as part of a psyop, the MAP movement is real and Mu is just one of many representatives. If you'd like to learn more, please consider taking a look at some of our major articles, checking out the unique perspectives we have to offer, or joining our small and friendly forum.

A thread on MAP Forum details much of the social media fallout regarding Bluesky and MAPs.

Sources

1. Mu conducted a thorough search of the terms "Minor Attracted" (as a phrase) and "MAP pedophile" on Google, Bing and DuckDuckGo. Almost all of the results documented professional studies of known MAP communities, MAP sites themselves, or journalistic treatments of MAP communities and MAP studies.

2. A collage of accounts cited by Libs of Bluesky, a gimmick account that was instrumental in scandalizing the Bluesky social network cites only 4 out of 20 fake accounts (reading L to R, numbers 2, 3, 5 and 8). The other accounts, Mu is able to confirm are those of online MAP personas. Fake accounts, however, received the most traffic when cross-posted by the gimmick account on X, with Bob the Blue wall Builder getting 2m+ impressions alone. The source of these fake accounts is unknown, however their confected style, prose and apparent targeting of the Democratic Party was very similar throughout.

3. Mu's committee can draw on personal experience of the term's coinage, as per sources in this article.