8 ms·

A teenage girl in South Sudan was auctioned off on Facebook

alexandercrohde 8y ago
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.
- reasonablemann 8y ago
  No reason to 'think' that, incidents involving a single person do tend to generate a stronger emotional response. "The statistics of large-scale killing don't convey emotion" https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2018/11/09/666150361/another-mass-shooting-compassion-fatigue-is-a-natural-reaction https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2018/11/09/6661503...
  - cortesoft 8y ago
    The death of one person is a tragedy, the death of millions is a statistic.
- mikeash 8y ago
  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 8y ago
    >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 8y ago
      How about we care AND do small things to help?
      - coldtea 8y ago
        That doesn't fall into the "useless care" case. But that's also not 99% of caring for stuff in the news.
    - mikeash 8y ago
      That’s fine, but be honest about it. Don’t use the fact that people care more about personal stories as an excuse.
    - projektir 8y ago
      Caring is not overrated if it's shared between a group of people and that group of people realizes it's a group of people.
  - alexandercrohde 8y ago
    Well I'm not sure you can discard a point because people tend to use it wrong. If somebody doesn't want to care about something the "reason" they give is likely not important, at the end of the day it's an emotional decision. If you want to make people care about something, I recommend offering them a situation where they can sleep better at night when they care.
    - mikeash 8y ago
      That’s kind of my point. When you remind people that they’re caring more about the tragedy of one person than they care about the tragedy of millions, you’re not helping them to sleep better. You’re just shaming them, and the result is likely to be that they’ll care less about both, rather than more about the millions.
- fgbfyhvfghu 8y ago
  This reaction is well understood by the media. When they want to humanize an issue they will go to great lengths to dig and find relatable and shocking ways to tell a story. That they do not is more telling about the interests of the people that fund them, all billionaires that profit from mass suffering and the exploitation of labor and vulnerable populations.
- ddingus 8y ago
  Then again, a whole lot of us know someone got sold too. Nail the fuckers somehow. That is not OK.
- Delmania 8y ago
  Isn't this evolution at play? Getting emotional over every large scale systemic issue we encounter would overwhelm us, so the larger the numbers the more we dehumanize?
- starbeast 8y ago
  When discussing a teenage girl being auctioned off on facebook, that does kind of come across as just a wee bit insensitive and prefacing it with 'not to sound insensitive' doesn't in fact assuage that in any measurable way. Single incidents sparking outrage are a force in society that we are not going to get rid of any time soon. The last thing we need is people outraged over an incident of slavery to be told to be apathetic, as the people who help promote it, which now apparently includes facebook, aren't going to suddenly be all reasonable if everyone shouts less about single incidents. While the solutions that are required may be structural, everything ever complained about is an incident.
trophycase 8y ago
Connecting the world!
grecy 8y ago
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?
- matt4077 8y ago
  Almost tautologically, without Facebook this "auction" would have had to be done using an inferior option. Maybe it would still have happened. But in at least some cases, that inferior platform will be worse enough for the crime not to occur. Even if it's just because EBay's design is stuck in the 90s. In any case, the "somebody else would have done it" argument didn't work in Nuremberg, and is generally recognised as a terrible conflation of morality with practicability.
- NedIsakoff 8y ago
  But its easier for politicans in that country to blame $FB then to blame their own country people.
- darpa_escapee 8y ago
  Backpage and SESTA would like to have a word with you.
- amingilani 8y ago
  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.
DoreenMichele 8y ago
"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.
nixarian 8y ago
At least it's efficient. Saves the girl the trouble of auctioning herself off using complex social rituals.
- lostgame 8y ago
  I'm sorry, this is a horribly inappropriate joke, even for dark humour, which I enjoy. Where's the 'flag' button for comments when you need it?
  - grzm 8y ago
    Click the timestamp for the comment and then click the "flag" link.
iplusplus 8y ago
Happy Thanksgiving, Dan. Please remember to take some time for yourself. HN will still be here.
lostgame 8y ago
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.
skissane 8y ago
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 8y ago
  "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 8y ago
    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 8y ago
legostormtroopr 8y ago
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
AvocadoPanic 8y ago
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?

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.

reasonablemann 8y ago
No reason to 'think' that, incidents involving a single person do tend to generate a stronger emotional response. "The statistics of large-scale killing don't convey emotion" https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2018/11/09/666150361/another-mass-shooting-compassion-fatigue-is-a-natural-reaction https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2018/11/09/6661503...
- cortesoft 8y ago
  The death of one person is a tragedy, the death of millions is a statistic.
mikeash 8y ago
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 8y ago
  >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 8y ago
    How about we care AND do small things to help?
    - coldtea 8y ago
      That doesn't fall into the "useless care" case. But that's also not 99% of caring for stuff in the news.
  - mikeash 8y ago
    That’s fine, but be honest about it. Don’t use the fact that people care more about personal stories as an excuse.
  - projektir 8y ago
    Caring is not overrated if it's shared between a group of people and that group of people realizes it's a group of people.
- alexandercrohde 8y ago
  Well I'm not sure you can discard a point because people tend to use it wrong. If somebody doesn't want to care about something the "reason" they give is likely not important, at the end of the day it's an emotional decision. If you want to make people care about something, I recommend offering them a situation where they can sleep better at night when they care.
  - mikeash 8y ago
    That’s kind of my point. When you remind people that they’re caring more about the tragedy of one person than they care about the tragedy of millions, you’re not helping them to sleep better. You’re just shaming them, and the result is likely to be that they’ll care less about both, rather than more about the millions.
fgbfyhvfghu 8y ago
This reaction is well understood by the media. When they want to humanize an issue they will go to great lengths to dig and find relatable and shocking ways to tell a story. That they do not is more telling about the interests of the people that fund them, all billionaires that profit from mass suffering and the exploitation of labor and vulnerable populations.
ddingus 8y ago
Then again, a whole lot of us know someone got sold too. Nail the fuckers somehow. That is not OK.
Delmania 8y ago
Isn't this evolution at play? Getting emotional over every large scale systemic issue we encounter would overwhelm us, so the larger the numbers the more we dehumanize?
starbeast 8y ago
When discussing a teenage girl being auctioned off on facebook, that does kind of come across as just a wee bit insensitive and prefacing it with 'not to sound insensitive' doesn't in fact assuage that in any measurable way. Single incidents sparking outrage are a force in society that we are not going to get rid of any time soon. The last thing we need is people outraged over an incident of slavery to be told to be apathetic, as the people who help promote it, which now apparently includes facebook, aren't going to suddenly be all reasonable if everyone shouts less about single incidents. While the solutions that are required may be structural, everything ever complained about is an incident.

trophycase 8y ago

Connecting the world!

grecy 8y ago

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?

matt4077 8y ago
Almost tautologically, without Facebook this "auction" would have had to be done using an inferior option. Maybe it would still have happened. But in at least some cases, that inferior platform will be worse enough for the crime not to occur. Even if it's just because EBay's design is stuck in the 90s. In any case, the "somebody else would have done it" argument didn't work in Nuremberg, and is generally recognised as a terrible conflation of morality with practicability.
NedIsakoff 8y ago
But its easier for politicans in that country to blame $FB then to blame their own country people.
darpa_escapee 8y ago
Backpage and SESTA would like to have a word with you.
amingilani 8y ago
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.

DoreenMichele 8y ago

"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.

nixarian 8y ago

At least it's efficient. Saves the girl the trouble of auctioning herself off using complex social rituals.

lostgame 8y ago
I'm sorry, this is a horribly inappropriate joke, even for dark humour, which I enjoy. Where's the 'flag' button for comments when you need it?
- grzm 8y ago
  Click the timestamp for the comment and then click the "flag" link.

iplusplus 8y ago

Happy Thanksgiving, Dan. Please remember to take some time for yourself. HN will still be here.

lostgame 8y ago

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.

skissane 8y ago

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 8y ago
"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 8y ago
  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 8y ago

legostormtroopr 8y ago

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

AvocadoPanic 8y ago

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?