Some call him a hero. But others brand him as "an inspiration."

A Texas man posed as a minor and lured a convicted child sex offender to his death because he felt law enforcement didn't do enough to keep pedophiles in prison.

James Spencer III, 24, had been in contact with Sean Connery Showers, 37, on the messaging app Kik, where he posed as an underage individual as the two planned to meet up while some of their messages appeared "sexual in nature," according to ABC 13.

Showers had shown up to the 900 block of Northwood St in Houston on May 29, 2023, when a car pulled up beside him before the driver fired numerous "automatic-like" shots and sped off.

In 2009, Showers pleaded guilty to federal child porn possession and was sentenced to 30 months in prison, along with being required to register as a sex offender.

Ten years later, he was sentenced to two more years in prison for failing to register as a sex offender, records obtained by the outlet said.

Another driver found Showers' lifeless body in a ditch within the residential neighborhood.

Investigators connected Spencer to Showers' death after a phone that was found under the man's lifeless body had messages indicating he was planning on meeting someone at the nearby Montie Beach Park.

"(Spencer and Showers) were communicating using a social media app," said 179th District Court Chief Prosecutor Rehman Merchant.

"The communications were sexual in nature. The officers believe that they were meeting up at this park to engage in sexual activity."

Some of the messages from Spencer were seemingly used to get Showers to admit his past.

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Spencer allegedly became a vigilante after claiming law enforcement wasn't doing enough to stop the other predators.

"(A) third party states (Spencer) told them he believed police were not doing enough to keep pedophiles incarcerated and (Spencer) wanted to rob and harm those type of men because they would do bad things to little children and other people and he knew how to track them by an app on the phone," his bail order, obtained by KTRK read. "A month later, defendant made the same comment that 'if the cops were not going to do anything, maybe he should kill them himself.'"

Princeton can use a man like James.

Chris Hanson is a homo.

Related: Rich Lowry does all that we can expect of someone with his limited intellect and diminished testosterone, and notes the obvious: Kids should not be on social media at all.

Mark Zuckerberg is very sorry.

His apology at a Senate hearing to the families of victims of online child sex abuse was dramatic, and the human thing to do in the moment, although he was pressured into it under persistent questioning from Sen. Josh Hawley, a Republican from Missouri.

Zuckerberg's contrition -- whether real, fake or somewhere in between -- doesn't really matter one way or the other, though.

The key question is why we are subjecting our children to a vast, real-time experiment in exposure to a radically new medium that evidence suggests is harmful to their emotional and mental health?

This dubious venture is unquestionably a boon to the bottom line of Meta and its peer companies, but it's doubtful that any parent in America has ever thought it was good for their kid.

Gosh, how can I get my tween to spend more time on Instagram? is, needless to say, a thought most parents don't have.

The social scientist Jonathan Haidt has been on this case for some time now and points out a marked increase in teen depression and anxiety that coincides with the rise of social media, particularly among the girls.

It is, to be sure, difficult to nail down with absolute certainty a direct relationship between social media and these distressing outcomes, but many studies find a connection and the lived experiences of families is, overwhelmingly, that the takeover of adolescence by social media hasn't been a healthy phenomenon.