I don't know if you've noticed, but there's a huge "pedophile panic" going around these days--much worse than the "satanic panic" back in the 80s and the "video game panics" in the 90s. I don't think anyone wants to be the next viral video star with a caption like "Found a pedo at the park--put him on blast!"

Nope, I hadn't, maybe it's not made it to my neck of the woods (world; I'm not in the US) yet. Is this extremely recently and mediated by the whole Trump-Epstein of it all?

I think it's been almost a decade since it started ramping up. Hard to say when its peak was exactly, but I think it's been finally started dropping off a bit in the past year. It's going to take a long time before the fear goes away though.

Just look at the article linked in this submission. Even just a false, unsubstantiated accusation can be devastating.

I don't think these are comparable. The accusations in this case are about systematically sleazy behavior and hint at not-so-consensual sex, which isn't exactly the same as "this guy bothered my kid somehow for a minute".

Also, to be clear, the accusations the article is about are false and unsubstantiated according to the author. It's a "he said, she said".

He's managed to agree with a small number of signatories of the Open Letter that they acted on no evidence (in a jurisdiction where the burden of proof for libel is on the defense, so if they had decided not to agree they'd have had to prove this wrong), but not e.g. the original accusors. The fact that he wrote an epic blog post without being clear on this doesn't really make him look great, though I acknowledge he wanted to focus on a different aspect.

The court case (ending in a consent order, not a judgement) is an interesting story about "as a UK citizen, should you be signing an Open Letter if you merely believe accusers, but don't know them to be right, and can demonstrate how you know", but it has little to do with the accusations themselves.