Bizarre Etsy listings spark conspiracy theories

A number of listings on Etsy featuring high price tags for photos featuring children have sparked a conspiracy theory that human traffickers have been using the e-commerce platform to facilitate their crimes.

On Tuesday, photos were shared on X, formerly Twitter, showing images of children smiling as they held slices of pizza. One showed a girl winking at the camera, while another showed a young girl winking and poking her tongue out. In the screenshots, they held price tags of $4,000 each.

Another showed a picture of two whole pizzas sitting side by side with a cost of $9,000. Other screenshots show colorful illustrations of children eating pizzas. They carry even heftier price tags, with the highest exceeding $32,700. A “rare find” listing showing a child in a knitted ensemble is up for more than $35,000.

In a check by Newsweek, all of the listings and their associated accounts have been deleted as of press time. There is no evidence to suggest that Etsy was involved in any illegal activity. Newsweek has contacted representatives of Etsy via email for comment.

The images have sparked speculation that the posts are trafficking children and revived the debunked “Pizzagate” conversation.

The baseless conspiracy theory claims that a swathe of high-ranking Democratic Party officials are involved in a child sex and human trafficking ring, run through the non-existent basement of a pizza shop.

The false theory is widely referred to as Pizzagate, and has its roots in QAnon-linked online spaces.

X account @EndWokeness shared screenshots of the pizza-themed items for sale on Etsy, along with the caption: “@Etsy can you please explain WTF these listings are all about?”

The post, which has been viewed more than 2 million times, led several X users to comment in response that “Pizzagate is real.”

“Etsy being used to traffic children,” wrote one X user. “Hey FBI, instead of targeting white, Christian Trump supporters maybe you can target these sick predators!!!”

Following up on its initial post, @EndWokeness shared screenshots of the illustrations of children eating pizza, adding the caption: “This is listed for $20,461 on Etsy. Forever Young Pizza. Can anyone explain this?”

The Etsy listings were also discussed on Reddit, where one user suggested an alternative theory that maybe somebody is cashing in on the crimes without committing one.

“If it’s distributers of [illegal content], they picked a really f****** stupid way to get caught. This is way too obvious,” they wrote. “It would be hilarious if someone was just selling pictures of pizza to pedophiles for huge sums of money. What are they going to do? Go to the police and complain they didn’t get what they thought they were buying?”

Over on X, one user said the questions surrounding the listings on Etsy were “just like Wayfair.”

The home goods retailer faced similar false allegations back in 2020, after a social media user pointed out that its cabinets were all listed with girls names, sparking speculation that the furniture items had children hidden in them as part of a purported trafficking ring. Those items also carried higher-than-average prices.

At the time, a spokesperson for the company told Newsweek in a statement: “There is, of course, no truth to these claims. The products in question are industrial grade cabinets that are accurately priced.

“Recognizing that the photos and descriptions provided by the supplier did not adequately explain the high price point, we have temporarily removed the products from site to rename them and to provide a more in-depth description and photos that accurately depict the product to clarify the price point.”

Prominent arrests—like that of Jeffrey Epstein for the alleged trafficking and sexual assault of underage girls—have shown that extensive pedophilia networks do exist, but the details shared against the aforementioned companies do not make a credible case.

While easily debunked “evidence” began to pile up regarding Pizzagate over the years—Newsweek previously documented how transgressive public art, including footage from concerts, was falsely recontextualized as secret Satanic rituals—the crux of the claims relied on emails stolen from the personal account of Hillary Clinton campaign manager John Podesta and published by WikiLeaks in 2016.

While the so-called “Podesta emails” contained multiple newsworthy revelations—including the content of speeches Clinton delivered to Goldman Sachs and the leak of questions to the Clinton campaign in advance of a CNN town hall with 2016 Democratic primary opponent Bernie Sanders—Pizzagate was built on the unsubstantiated claim that certain words within the emails were in fact coded allusions to child sex trafficking.

Security experts warned at the time that the leak likely mixed genuine communications with fabricated material, which is a common method of planting disinformation.

“I’ve looked at a lot of document dumps provided by hacker groups over the years, and in almost every case you can find a few altered or entirely falsified documents,” Jeffrey Carr, CEO of the cybersecurity company Taia Global, told Politifact. “But only a few. The vast majority were genuine. I believe that’s the case with the Podesta emails, as well.”

Despite their questionable accuracy and authenticity, the leaks prompted arbitrary associations by conspiracy theorists, who grasped onto various food-related terms, including “cheese,” “map,” “walnut sauce” and, of course, “pizza,” to claim they were actually coded indications of people’s preferred child victims.

No alleged victims have come forward and no physical evidence has been found in relation to the conspiracy, which was widely discredited and debunked by, among others, Bloomberg, The Washington Post, and The Los Angeles Times.