‘Barbaric use of technology’ as family auctions child bride over Facebook

Looks like 2018 is not the year for Facebook, as after the Cambridge Analytica scandal and a clash with Apple CEO Tim Cook, it is yet again in hot waters after a teenage girl was auctioned over the social media site.

A news has been circulating on social media lately about a child bride being auctioned through Facebook in South Sudan. The act has since then been regarded as a ‘barbaric use of technology’. However, days after auction, Facebook took down the post after it learned about it, reported The Guardian.

A 16-year old girl in South Sudan was put for sale on Facebook for marriage. Facebook told Tech Crunch that as soon as it learned about the post 15 days later, it immediately took down the post. However, till then the girl was already sold for marriage and the father received the ‘largest dowry ever paid in the civil war-torn country’ of 500 cows, three cars, and $10,000 in exchange, as per the Children’s Rights Organization Plan International.

“Any form of human trafficking -- whether posts, pages, ads or groups is not allowed on Facebook. We removed the post and permanently disabled the account belonging to the person who posted this to Facebook,” a Facebook spokesperson said.

Plan International said that such vicious use of technology can possibly inspire other families to use social media for similar terrible activities. What’s more surprising was even some of the government officials were involved in the activity.

Plan International’s country director in South Sudan, George Otim, pushed the government for suspending all the officials involved. He also described the use of one of the biggest social networking site for such disturbing cases as a ‘reminiscent of latter-day slave markets’. Otim told CNN that though offering payments is a part of the country’s culture, in this case, however, it was ‘taken to another level because of technology’.

Meanwhile, Facebook has been criticized for not taking immediate action and failing to resolve monitoring issues. Many organizations have called on to the social media site to improve its monitoring practices.

“We’re always improving the methods we use to identify content that breaks our policies, including doubling our safety and security team to more than 30,000 and investing in technology,” the spokesperson added.