Not to get involved in this stupidity as I get the whiff of faggot Antis about, but there are multiple things it refers to, as you mentioned. However when @Save the Loli registered 7 years ago It absolutely just meant "kid." No connotations. Period. There was lolicon back then, of course, but that was "female kid + porn." "Lolicon" came from "Loli," (and they both came from "Lolita"), it wasn't the other way around.
The big bru-ha-ha is that in the past 5 years or so "Antis" have shown up. They're the woke Social Justice Warriors of yesteryear, except they realized hitching their wagons to Troons isn't going to take them much further because they finally realized that troons are fucking nuts and the winds, they are a changin'. So instead they've hooked their wagon to the anime "community" and are moralfagging all over everyone for clout and virtue points as they try and infest it. Harassing artists (including Japanese artists) who draw characters they don't like, trying to get shit like One Punch Man or My Hero Academia nuked from Anime Sites, demanding character design changes and "fixing" art and costumes, etc etc. Because taking the bold innovative moral stance that "pedophilia is bad" is as much a cheat code for internet asspats as "I support extra special gay rights" was 10 years ago, and just like back then "gay rights" became "you do whatever I say or I say you're doing a bigotry," "pedophilia" now involves screaming at an artist drawing a college girl with DD cups with eyes that are a bit too big for the Antis' taste, ree.
Antis have been caught connected to a loooot of the existing woke shit, including the Trans grooming discords -- there are Anti discords that are ran like a cult and push people to harass artists en mass and the like, they're ran by your bog standard local rat king variant, et cetera. I'd be surprised if there wasn't an "Anti Movement/Community" thread, actually. Lots of them are ex-tumblr users so a lot of them have pedoshit in their history (gay shipping and the like) or shit like yaoi shotacon art and the like.
I guess what I'm saying is when you give @Save the Loli shit just for his name (which, again, 7 years ago absolutely meant "Save the Girl" + "I like anime/will be using random anime girls for my pfp") or pretend he's a pedo you're being a moralfag just like the new pseudocows on Reddit/X/etc. Good for updoots and sticker farming I guess, you do you.
But it's still kinda gay.