Facebook has been criticized in the past for taking too long before inappropriate posts are taken down. The company claims to have filters and humans in place to actually help prevent such posts from existing in the first place, but unfortunately a report from Reuters has revealed how Facebook seems to have managed to drop the ball yet again.The report claims that in South Sudan, there was a bidding war for a teenage bride who was aged 17, where the auction was sparked due to a post made on Facebook that advertised her marriage. The post was made on the 25th of October and it was only removed on the 9th of November which is apparently after the girl had already gotten married.
According to a spokesperson for Plan International, a girls’ rights activist group, the post had gone viral in South Sudan, which meant that everyone in the region already knew about it, but yet it took so long for Facebook to take it down. Facebook has since responded by saying, “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 add, “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.”