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On 4 November 2016, Reddit user u/DumbScribblyUnctious published a thread titled Comet Ping Pong - Pizzagate Summary to subreddit r/The_Donald (a community of Donald Trump supporters), which appears to have touched off a complex and detailed conspiracy theory involving WikiLeaks' release of e-mails from former Hillary Clinton presidential campaign chair John Podesta, child exploitation, and a Washington, D.C., pizzeria called Comet Ping Pong. None of this elaborate conspiracy theory was true, as the New York Times noted: Although the original Pizzagate post was deleted at some point between 4 and 21 November 2016, archived versions of it contained what appeared to be the original post in its entirety. (A subreddit dedicated to the controversy, r/pizzagate, was created in the interim.) A brief and incomplete summary of the theory espoused in the original post goes as follows: Several pages were linked to support the details of the claim (an e-mail in which David Brock was described as batshit crazy by Clinton associate Neera Tanden was among them) and the post primarily focused on Alefantis and his loose ties to the Clinton campaign via a former romantic relationship with David Brock of Media Matters for America. Users tracked down Alefantis' purported Instagram account (since deleted or restricted), which they said hosted images of children, gay clubs, drugs, and generally bizarre or unsettling imagery: However, the photographs that the Instagram account purportedly hosted were instead, apparently, taken from the pages of various people who liked the restaurant's page on Facebook: Some of the photographs were apparently taken from random web sites: Alefantis also said many of the photographs were of children of family and friends, not patrons of Comet Ping Pong: Scattered evidence from previously leaked Podesta communications was included, such as an e-mail about children orphaned after 2010's catastrophic earthquake in Haiti (along with information about adoption agencies and trafficking), or another thread claiming Clinton campaign manager John Podesta and his brother Tony Podesta were purportedly in Portugal at the time Madeleine McCann disappeared. Additional evidence was presented in collage format, visually linking unrelated Instagram screengrabs, a number of individuals supposedly involved, purported coded signaling for pedophiles (such as a butterfly or a play, eat, drink insignia which could be abbreviated PED), and assertions that underground tunnels linked adjacent business (which themselves also use pedophilia code in their materials): Imagery widely believed to be code for pedophiles to signal one another was a common theme in the myriad Pizzagate theories. Purported symbols such as butterflies and spirals were increasingly spotted in unrelated places, creating the impression that conspiracy was as vast as it was nebulous. (As we have noted in the past, fear of pedophile code imagery is occasionally the basis for panic, but law enforcement officials believed that the symbols themselves are used among adults to signal preferences, not as labels for children, not as markers placing them in any danger.) On 6 November 2016, Washington City Paper summarized the claims, noting that the rumors originated with long-circulating claims about Bill Clinton and Jeffrey Epstein, and confirming Alefantis' link to Brock: In the period between 6 November 2016 and 21 November 2016, social media users continued to examine purported links to the pizzeria. Not long after Comet Ping Pong became the center of myriad ambiguous child abuse theories, the business' Yelp page was locked down by the site's operators, along with the following note: By 15 November 2016, Alefantis told Washington City Paper the rumors showed no sign of abating, and had begun to affect adjacent venues (who were, according to the conspiracy theory, connected to the pizza restaurant by underground tunnels, apparently including a non-governmental organization across the street that works with Haitian orphans). The Pizzagate/Comet Ping Pong social media investigation bore striking similarity to a similar Reddit-based panic concerning a creepy day care in January 2015. The Fun Time Kidz Day Care conspiracy quickly spiraled into offline harassment and in-person surveillance, but nothing came of the deeply scrutinized claims. On 1 December 2016, Comet Ping Pong announced the addition of stronger security measures due to then-ongoing harassment, some of which affected nearby businesses: Via Facebook update, the venue stated: On 4 December 2016, police detained an unidentified man who entered Comet Ping Pong carrying an assault rifle and allegedly fired one shot: Although the Pizzagate controversy remains a high-interest conspiracy, we are unable to locate any substantive aspect of the claims that could be fact-checked or otherwise held up to the light to determine their veracity. And while rumors about pedophilia and child trafficking remain standard in urban folklore, roughly 90 percent [PDF] of assaults on children in the U.S. are committed by a friend or family member, a number reiterated by the United States Department of Justice. Most [PDF] abuse of the nature alleged is committed by family members, family friends, or other trusted adults — without the use of coded toys or pizzeria sex rings.
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