
A teenage girl in South Sudan was auctioned off on Facebook - privateprofile
https://news.vice.com/en_us/article/8xpqy3/a-teenage-girl-in-south-sudan-was-auctioned-off-on-facebook
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DoreenMichele
"When worlds collide."

This is news primarily because putting it on Facebook made it visible to First
World residents and made them feel complicit in the transaction. Otherwise, we
mostly don't really care that there are child brides being auctioned off in
Third World countries (etc). "Not Our Problem."

And the outrage is problematic for a variety of reasons. Historically in the
US it was common for girls to get married at age 14 to 16. Deciding that age
18 is the age of legal adult consent etc is somewhat arbitrary.

That doesn't mean I approve of auctioning off young girls for marriage, but
you need to look at a variety of factors and judge this in context. The
practice of a _bride price_ does two things: It compensates the parents for
providing a valuable wife who will most likely never have wealth and power in
her own name because that primarily goes through men in most countries the
world over and the problem is more severe in less developed countries. It also
is intended to insure that her husband has the capacity to provide for her.

What you see in less developed countries is less education overall and less
opportunity overall and less use of effective birth control overall. So you
wind up with inherent issues where getting laid at all is highly likely to
lead to pregnancy and a lot of cultural practices grow out of that reality.

I'm a former full-time wife and mom. I was also one of the top three students
of my graduating high school, a National Merit Scholarship winner, etc. A
friend of the family once told me "Everyone expected you to be a millionaire
by the age of 30. What the hell happened?" And I pointed to my kids and said
"That happened." basically.

So I've spent a lot of years reading up on women's issues and history and so
forth, trying to figure out why in the hell I never got the two career couple
lifestyle that I expected to have and that I felt was my due in life. And it's
led me to think long and hard on what I have come to think of as "human sexual
morality" and the myriad things that grow out of trying to resolve the issues
rooted in "people hunger for sex and then that can lead to babies, disease,
social drama, etc."

How do you resolve those humanely and in a manner that treats all parties
well?

Bride Price is one way some cultures try to make sure that women -- who will
not have careers of their own and power of their own -- are properly cared for
by upstanding citizens who are productive and take care of their family
because they are good men.

It can easily go weird and bad places, but selling children into slavery isn't
actually the goal of having a bride price.

I would love to see _a better world_. I seriously doubt we get there by
jumping to ugly conclusions about other cultures and assuming the absolute
worst and refusing to take context into account.

~~~
starbeast
As a counterpoint, in Sudan it goes to here -
[https://edition.cnn.com/2018/06/26/africa/sudan-death-
senten...](https://edition.cnn.com/2018/06/26/africa/sudan-death-sentence-
noura-hussein-asequals-intl/index.html) \- and people shouting judgmentally
about that to Sudan has helped save that girl's life. Perhaps outrage over
this might help this other girl before she ends up stabbing her husband. Might
even be good for the husband.

~~~
inawarminister
Just want to note that the country in this topic is SOUTH Sudan, not Sudan.

~~~
starbeast
Thanks for picking me up on that. I try not to be geographically lazy, so I
appreciate it being pointed out if I am being.

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alexandercrohde
Not to sound insensitive, but I think some of the worlds problems are caused
by the fact that it's easier for people to get emotional about a specific
incident they can put a face on than a systematic problems.

~~~
mikeash
While I totally agree, it also seems to me that this sort of thinking is
almost always used as an excuse not to care about anything, rather than a call
to care more about the bigger stuff too.

~~~
coldtea
> _it also seems to me that this sort of thinking is almost always used as an
> excuse not to care about anything_

Caring is overrated. Unless one does something about what they care for, it's
not just useless but also harmful (e.g. stressful to the person caring with no
effect towards solving the problem).

~~~
cortesoft
How about we care AND do small things to help?

~~~
coldtea
That doesn't fall into the "useless care" case. But that's also not 99% of
caring for stuff in the news.

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skissane
Facebook doesn't want this kind of stuff on their platform. But, it can be
very hard for them to stop it.

What language were the postings in? The article screenshots one English post,
but possibly many of the others were in some local language. Facebook might
not employ anyone with language skills in that language. Automated translation
software often performs poorly with less common languages, if it is available
at all. Even if the postings are all in some major language, they may have
been using local slang or jargon, and unless Facebook has staff in or from
that country, they may lack the cultural context to understand properly what
is going on. Even if someone from that country reports it, it could be very
difficult for Facebook's staff to fairly judge the report if they lack the
necessary cultural and language skills to interpret it.

~~~
sorokod
"Facebook doesn't want this kind of stuff on their platform. But, it can be
very hard for them to stop it."

So, in other words, this is the price of doing business?

~~~
skissane
Anyone who runs a website with user-submitted content has this problem. If you
allow users to post content in any language, how can you effectively moderate
their postings if you don't understand the language they are posting in? There
are thousands of minority languages in the world, it is infeasible (even for a
company as big as Facebook) to retain staff with language skills in all of
them.

The other option is to ban the use of minority languages. Only major languages
are allowed. But, from a human rights perspective, that is an affront to
diversity and freedom, and is contributing to the endangered state of many of
these languages. But, if you allow minority languages, you run the risk that
people are advocating or organising human rights violations in that minority
language (slave trading, advocating for genocide, etc), and the platform can't
stop it because it can't understand it. So, it is a tradeoff, which threat to
human rights do you prevent, because you can't feasibly prevent both.

~~~
sorokod
Calling Facebook a "site with user submitted content" is not incorrect but to
make it a bit more accurate is to add that FB makes massive amount of money
from the site with user submitted content (you may want to ponder how exactly
Sudanese users are monetized).

With this in mind it looks like the occasional slave auction is just an
unfortunate consequence of the scale and ambition of the enterprise.

~~~
skissane
Yes, they make a lot of money. But, I'm pretty sure they don't make a lot of
money from all languages equally.

According to Ethnologue, there are 401 languages with over 1 million speakers,
and 1370 with over 100,000. Now, can Facebook justify retaining moderation
teams with skills in 401 different languages, even 1370 different languages,
when most of those languages probably make very little advertising revenue,
not enough to pay for the required moderation?

Should Facebook be forced to provide moderation services, at a loss, for
lesser used languages? Or, should they ban the use of those languages, where
advertising revenue is insufficient to pay for moderation? Or allow them on
the platform unmoderated, at the risk that their speakers might get away with
saying or doing some horrible things?

I don't think Facebook should be forced to provide moderation services for
languages with little or no revenue, and I think allowing them to be used
unmoderated is the lesser evil than banning them.

~~~
sorokod
Nobody forced FB to run a business that allows a slave auction on their
platform. How to make it impossible is not my problem - it should be their
problem.

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grecy
I realize this is horrific for many living in the Western World, but I think
it's important to keep it in perspective.

Does anyone really think it wouldn't have happened without Facebook? That it
hasn't been happening for thousands of years?

It's not like the invention of Facebook created this.

This is also the epitome of "think of the Children". I realize that in our
culture auctioning off children is not acceptable, but who's to say we know
what's right? maybe we're OK auctioning off rabbits or religious artifacts but
another culture would find _that_ horrific. So should we just say that
whatever we deem OK is fine?

~~~
amingilani
I come from a country where child marriages are fairly common, despite being
illegal — but the law isn't enforced.

The marriages aren't arranged on social media yet, but I don't see why in a
few years with easier access to the internet, and with younger people
arranging marriages, more of these won't be done.

I don't think Facebook is to blame for this, and I do think it's unfair that
Facebook is being asked to solve a problem governments haven't been able to
for decades — but they're in a better position than anyone was.

>but who's to say we know what's right?

However, I gotta disagree with you there. Some things we can all agree are
wrong. It's a short list and it includes things like slavery, forced
prostition, rape, murder, etc. But that list definitely includes selling
children to the highest bidder.

~~~
mikeash
I don’t think Facebook is to blame for the problem, but they’re also not
innocent here. They facilitated the transaction. It’s little different from
fencing stolen goods or being a hit man’s agent. Just because governments
haven’t figured out how to eradicate theft or murder doesn’t mean you’re in
the clear for helping to make it happen.

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legostormtroopr
Obligatory disclaimer: Facebook has massive overreach, human trafficking is
evil, etc...

I love to hate on Facebook, but given the near ubiquity of Facebook, and the
internet, is this Facebook's fault? Isn't this just a consequence of
ubiquitous technology?

There were so many different human technologies and inventions used in this
tragedy, why lay the blame on Facebook, if we rewrote the headline, which of
the following technologies are also to blame:

A teenage girl in South Sudan was auctioned off using __the World Wide Web __

A teenage girl in South Sudan was auctioned off using __the Internet __

A teenage girl in South Sudan was auctioned off using __DNS & TCP/IP __

A teenage girl in South Sudan was auctioned off using __mobile phones __

A teenage girl in South Sudan was auctioned off using __written and spoken
human languages __

A teenage girl in South Sudan was auctioned off using __money and the abstract
concept of trade __

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AvocadoPanic
If we were to make an ordered list, in decreasing 'horribleness' of all the
things that are 'wrong' in South Sudan, would this even make the top ten?

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lostgame
There have some incredibly inappropriate comments in this thread, two of which
I've already had to flag.

Please, everyone, respect that this is a very serious issue that isn't to be
used as fodder for humour.

It's one thing to make a jab at Zuck or Facebook - it's another thing entirely
to try to make any aspect of this situation funny.

Thank you.

