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Comment by grecy | Hacker News Reader

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?

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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.

> 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.

It really isn’t, but you have to look at it from the government’s perspective: it’s much more convenient to pin the blame on Facebook, which presumably should already have policies in place to stop things like this–of course, all the while forgetting that the same thing applies to the country and its laws itself.

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.

> 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.

Generally we consider auctioning off people to be different enough to classify it as human trafficking, which is seperate from selling animals or objects.

Fuck cultural reletavism, we can use logic and reason to discern that auctioning off anyone is barbaric, let alone a child bride.

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.

> So should we just say that whatever we deem OK is fine?

Yes, pretty much. What other option is there? Has any culture not done exactly this?

Backpage and SESTA would like to have a word with you.

But its easier for politicans in that country to blame $FB then to blame their own country people.

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