It's deeply unfortunate that people have to go through that, but fundamentally I don't think we should be capitulating to extortionists. If we do that, we're effectively creating a market for threatening and hurting people.
In my mind, it's not unlike the people who half-block a traffic lane when there's a merge upcoming. In their mind, I'm sure they think they're doing the Lord's work, and it scratches their itch for a sense of justice in an unjust world. In reality, it slows everyone down and makes the system worse. Giving into our human biases for seeking justice can often lead to worse outcomes.
What are you actually suggesting here?
ETA:
I should point out that I really don't think what Kitboga does counts as "vigilantism" in the classic sense. He's not going out to directly do anything outside of wasting people's time and reporting bank account numbers to relevant authorities.
I'm just suggesting that the actions within the article make the situation worse rather than better. As you alluded to, there are other, more fruitful ways to attack this problem, usually related to systemic changes.
I do think his actions count as vigilantism since that term is applied to actions explicitly intended to prevent crimes. From TFA "those who aim to waste scammers' time otherwise spent ripping off innocent victims."
But just to kind of play devil's advocate; lets suppose we educate people about this stuff, and it's extremely successful, no grandpa is selling his house to buy Google Play cards because we were so good at communication. Wouldn't those same people get beaten (or worse) in the same way that you're suggesting with Kitboga?
I think this underscores the importance of looking at this systemically. It's easy to think this is just a story about phone scams. Looking at the bigger picture, though, it's really about human trafficking. To directly answer your question, if we were able to solve the root human trafficking issue that allows these criminal industries to be profitable, then we'd prevent those beatings in the first place. In fact, some people running these organizations are already looking at using AI to run the scams rather than humans. Under that scenario, your educational outreach would be a huge success, but it does require working at the root problem first.
I actually don't think we disagree very much about the actual solution to the problem. This is definitely bigger than a few Youtubers making scambaiting videos. It's going to be a brave new world with AI voices getting better and better, and I think law enforcement agencies are going to be pretty proactive.
[1] e.g. the IRS will never ask for payments in gift cards or cryptocurrency, neither will the police, don't just let anyone connect to your computer with Teamviewer or Anydesk, if you're going to be arrested they probably aren't going to do it over the phone, etc.
When I brought up dich0timous thinking, it was not in response to "no, that wouldn't change my mind" but rather "the only options are to capitulate to the scam or fight it in a way that puts someone else at risk".
There's a strange correlation between pedantry and dichotomous thinking in resarch literature. They are also over-indexed in STEM fields, so I guess it shouldn't be surprising when it's commonly encountered on this forum.