the strange conspiracy theory of children sold on Vinted

“Oh my God, there’s also Black Friday on kids sold on Vinted. It’s shameful, I don’t even have the words anymore”, can we read in a message circulating on TikTok. Since mid-November, a rumor has been circulating according to which the second-hand sales platform hosts classified ads of a pedophile nature.

At the center of this accusation, objects sold at apparently too high prices, associated with mentions of sizes and ages. A section of suspicious Internet users thus interpreted the announcements of the sale of a jacket for 29,000 euros, dolls for 14,000 euros or even a set of figurines for 111,111 euros as being encrypted messages for traffic in child. Many Internet users take mentions as proof “premature”, ” 10 years “ or “140cm” on the ads – which correspond to pre-filled clothing sizes, Vinted being originally an online thrift store.

While the recent release in France of the film Sound of Freedom drew attention to the existence of organized child crime networks as much as it gave rise to caricatured representations of child trafficking, the rumor spread quickly on X, TikTok or YouTube.

American conspiracy theory

The origin of these speculations is to be found in the United States: it is the copy of a conspiracy theory dating back to July 2020, in full swing of the QAnon conspiracy movement, which saw in Donald Trump the ally of a mysterious omniscient secret agent fighting against the forces of evil. Many Internet users were then convinced that Wayfair, an American mail-order site for home goods, was selling children behind advertisements for furniture with names and prices considered suspicious.

Amateur investigators had thus speculated that a cushion named Duplessis, on sale for $9,999 (9,140 euros), was a code name for Sara Dupleissis, a missing 13-year-old girl. The followers of this theory seemed unaware that it had been found two days after his escape, safe and sound.

As for the high prices, they can be explained differently. As detailed Fortune, innocuous objects can reach seemingly aberrant prices. Some platforms, like Amazon, allow sellers to set prices automatically based on competing offerings. This is how in 2011 a book ended up over $20,000, two owners having checked the automated bidding option. Displaying your product at a prohibitive amount is also a strategy for managing stock shortages without delisting the item.

Three years after the rumor about Wayfair, despite the total absence of evidence, the French-speaking conspiracy leaders remain convinced of child trafficking on the furniture site, and analyze other sites with the same suspicious prism: “We followed the Wayfair affair. I tell myself: I’m going to sell my clothes, but first I’m going to see how it goes. It was the first time I went [sur Vinted]. (…) It went from there. I started digging with the spirit of investigation that we have now”explains Aline, who manages the Quantum Leap Translation account on X, a relay for English-speaking conspiracy content, in an audio conversation on noted by radical communities expert Tristan Mendès France.

On November 11, the account calls out Vinted on X: “Say @vinted, what are these prices? Not so long ago, other sites were charging these kinds of exorbitant prices but what people were buying wasn’t the items advertised…” The allusion to Wayfair is supported. The parallel is taken up by the conspiracy channel ADNM (formerly Les DéQodors, one of the main French-speaking QAnon communities). The rumor is gone. It has since spread across most social networks, well beyond the QAnon spheres from which it originated, conveying an unrealistic vision of child trafficking.

Bad jokes, mistakes or misunderstandings

Are these allegations credible? The British association for the fight against online child crime Internet Watch Foundation assures“never heard of it or seen any evidence” such processes.

The other advertisements at prices of several thousand euros corresponded to luxury or collector’s items, lot sales, open auctions or entry errors. Certain little-known collectors’ markets may have caused misunderstandings, such as a Pokémon card displayed at 30,000 euroswhich is the map the rarest and most sought after all. Some offers at incredible prices may also correspond to fraudulent “false advertisements”, which is why Vinted has removed them.

Generally speaking, the “evidence” is more a matter of sometimes acrobatic speculation. “Based on our current research, we do not believe that [les annonces mises en cause] are linked to criminal activity”defended Vinted in a statement to Worldensuring that “trust and safety are a top priority”.

Its French competitor Leboncoin was also questioned on X for an allegedly suspicious ad, with the mention of the rumor of child trafficking. Contacted, the company did not respond to requests from World.

News about minors offered on the Internet

However, illegal classified ads do exist. And many platforms have had to explain the illegal activities of their clients – Craigslist in the United States or Vivastreet in France, to name a few. But these announcements did not resemble those for the sale of clothing, toys or even furniture sold on second-hand platforms, contrary to what the rumor targeting Vinted claims.

In 2013, an investigation by the Reuters news agency had uncovered an exchange network of adopted children on Facebook and Yahoo!, intended for host families wishing to “replace” their child with another. Many Internet users sharing the rumor of trafficking on Vinted cite as proof the case of a magistrate who proposed to his contacts on a swingers site sex with his 12 year old daughter, without however having taken action. He was sentenced in 2022 to two years of suspended prison sentence and compulsory treatment. The affair took place on a specialized site, in the form of an explicit announcement.

Other cases of the sale of children online have hit the headlines, but they were a priori jokes, like the case of a ” adorable “ 2 year old girl put up for sale in 2011 by a mother from Michigan − “just a joke”, she will lament. In 2014, a father from Rouen had put her baby up for sale at 1,000 euros on Leboncoin because it is “born red while[il] wanted a blond one”. In 2018, a little girl had been priced at 1,000 euros. The mother had called a hoax of his daughter, “annihilated” that it has grown so much.

Vinted may have been faced with similar situations. “We cannot always say that a case is just a bad joke or truly linked to illegal activity”explains the platform, while reminding that for each suspicious ad, it deletes it and collaborates with the authorities “as soon as necessary”.

Several press investigations have shown that pedophiles are diverting their vocation from mainstream online platforms to seek out their prey. But, in this case, instead they use dating sites for teenagers.