Child Pornography for Sale on Etsy?

Online Shopping platform, Etsy, is accused of facilitating the sale of children and child porn.

• The accusations started flying around when users started noticing weird and over-priced listings depicting children.
• While the listings are real, the CP sale allegations are false as stated by Etsy and reinforced by big media outlets.

Etsy is under fire for allegedly allowing users to covertly sell children and child pornography (CP) on its online shopping platform.

In recent weeks, social media platforms across the board have been buzzing with a conspiracy theory that claims that e-commerce giant Etsy is involved in child trafficking. People have noticed seemingly innocuous items listed for mind-blowingly high prices.

The allegations first came out on X. Real listings on Etsy, featuring AI-generated images of children and using supposed code words for pedophilia, fueled the theory. Allegedly, “pizza” refers to girls, “hotdog” to boys, “pasta” to little boys, and so forth.

The listings were admittedly weird. There was a creepy AI-generated little boy holding chicken wings going for $4,000 with a description of “Chicken File- Instant Download (encrypted)”. Another featured an AI-generated little girl winking with her tongue out holding a pizza slice for $4,000. Description? “Pizza File-Instant Download (Encrypted).” There were even Etsy listings for photos of pizzas up for sale for a cool $9,000. How do they explain listing a children’s overall for $35,210? The picture had a little girl in said overalls.

The listings were promptly removed by the company, but by then the damage had been done.

News outlets were quick to dismiss the trafficking allegations as a conspiracy theory feeding off a debunked 2016 theory called Pizzagate. That theory alleged that high-profile Democrats were operating a child trafficking ring from a Washington DC pizza restaurant.

Etsy, for its part, investigated and found nothing was going on. So, all good, nothing to see here, right? Etsy is clean, according to… Etsy.

Can you really blame the public for having the worst faith in big corporations? Did they all conveniently forget Epstein?

I’m not a conspiracy theorist. The Earth is very much round, the moon landing did happen, and Mark Zuckerberg is, indeed, human (minus the ethics that typically come with being one). But something is not right here, especially the investigation.

These listings could very much be some guy trying to scam people or someone who genuinely thinks that feeding an AI a prompt is worth that much money.

But considering how serious these allegations are, Etsy should not be cleared just because it said it was clean. Those are mental gymnastics that we cannot afford to have. A legitimate investigation by a credible third party should be conducted because it’s not the only e-commerce platform that has been accused of this.

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