Child bride auctioned on social media

Child bride auctioned on social media

Social media has changed drastically over the past 10 years.  While it started off as a way to stay in touch with family and friends and to make new connections it has now turned into many things; some of them sinister.  Backpage was recently shut down after people were being sold for sex and money against their will, now Facebook is being attacked for multiple controversies.

October 25 2018 a 16 year old girl in Sudan was put up for auction on Facebook to be wed. The post was removed on November 9th 2018.  “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 company spokesperson said in a statement. While that may be it took a little over two weeks to get that ad down.  By November 3rd see was already married.  Five men bid on her including some reportedly “high-ranking South Sudanese government officials.”

Plan International’s country director in South Sudan, George Otim, said: “That a girl could be sold for marriage on the world’s biggest social networking site in this day and age is beyond belief.”
He added: “This barbaric use of technology is reminiscent of latter-day slave markets.”

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