A 17-Year-Old Girl Was Sold By Her Father On Facebook, And The Company Just Failed To Stop It

There are innumerable instances of Facebook being abused by people for nefarious purposes. We've seen hacks, scams, election manipulation, and more.

But nothing comes close to this despicable attempt at using Mark Zuckerberg's social platform for something so despicable -- Facebook's disappointing response to the incident.

Despite still being in school, 40 percent of South Sudanese girls are married off each year - Reuters

Just last month, human rights activists uncovered a horrifying post originating from South Sudan. A local man in the civil war-torn country was apparently trying to get his 17-year-old daughter married. He was also more than happy to sell her off for a tidy sum to do it.

The auction, which went viral after being pointed out to Facebook and local authorities, had at least five men from South Sudan trying to bid for the poor girl. The winner at least three times older than the girl, paid the father in $10,000, 500 cows, two luxury cars, two bikes, a boat, and a couple of new smartphones. Authorities say it's the largest dowry ever paid in the country.

A teenage girl was successfully sold on Facebook

"She has been reduced to a mere commodity," the human rights activist that tried to stop the human trafficking attempt, Philips Anyang Ngong, told The Associated Press. He called it "the biggest test of child abuse, trafficking and auctioning of a human being." Sickeningly, one of those bidders was the state's deputy governor.

The sale unfortunately went through before it was stopped, with the teenage girl becoming the winning bidder's ninth wife. He even posted photos to Facebook after the fact, with her sitting next to him in a lavish dress, staring at the floor in disbelief at her situation.

Reuters

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It's just the latest stage in a country with a deep-seated history of child brides and dowries, much like our own here in India In South Sudan, dowries are also usually paid in the form of cows. Though illegal now, the United Nations Population Fund points out that 40 percent of South Sudanese girls are still married off before the age of 18.

However, Facebook has rightfully received a significant amount of backlash over the matter, both within the country and on the international stage. It was several days before Facebook took cognizance of the situation and removed the auction post, by which time the transaction had been completed. Frustratingly, it also left untouched numerous other posts supporting the actions of both the father and the buyer in the incident.

Activists, lawmakers, and human rights groups across the world are shocked that the biggest social network in the world could be used to facilitate such a medieval practice, with absolutely no restrictions or consequences.

Reuters

Facebook, as usual, has commented in such desultory fashion it makes you want to strangle someone.

"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," they released in public statement.

"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 Facebook spokesperson said.

But for all their work to automatically detect online bullying in pictures through artificial intelligence, you'd think they'd have a way to monitor for people being literally sold off.