A child bride was sold in South Sudan via a Facebook Auction

Facebook has had a very tough year, they’ve had all sorts of troubles and many are beginning to question Facebook’s reliability and integrity as a platform. In fact, many reports even claimed that the investors want Mark Zuckerberg to step down as a CEO and recently Tim Cook’s comments on the social media giant has added fuel to the flame which prompted Mar Zuckerberg to reply in an aggressive manner. Amidst all of this, another news has started circulating the social media, this time about a girl being sold on Facebook in a barbaric use of technology which has brought Facebook once again under the fire.

An auction was held on the populous social media platform for a 16-year old girl in South Sudan. Payment was sought by the father for giving his daughter’s hand in marriage. According to Facebook, the post was immediately taken down as soon as the company learned about it, however, until then the girl’s marriage had already taken place. According to the Children’s Rights Organization Plan International, the father received 500 cows, three cars and $10,000 in exchange for his daughter and such a barbaric use of technology could inspire other families to use social media for such heinous activities. Another shocking aspect regarding this biding was that some officials were also involved in this activity.

George Otim, Plan International’s country director in South Sudan, urged the government to suspend all the officials that were involved in this bidding, he further added that the use of the biggest networking site in the world for such activities is reminiscent of the slave markets. The bidding started on October 25th, while Facebook removed the post on November 9 – 15 days later. Interestingly, Voice of America (VOA) published a report citing the use of Facebook for child bidding three days prior to Facebook deleting that post. This could be a testament to the fact that there are many other illegal activities that might be going on the world’s biggest social media platform that the company is itself unaware of.