Officials in Baghdad shut down all of the city’s LED advertising screens on Saturday evening after a hacker posted a pornographic video on one of them.
The hacked screen was highly visible in a major traffic area of the city, so social media was quickly flooded with clips of the “immoral scenes” on display.
The electronic billboard in Baghdad’s Uqba bin Nafia Square “showed a pornographic film for several minutes before we cut the power cable,” according to a security official who spoke with Agence France-Presse (AFP).
AFP’s source said city officials decided to “turn off all advertising screens in Baghdad.” Many of them were still turned off on Sunday morning.
The alleged hacker was arrested about nine hours after the incident and identified as “a technician who had financial issues with the company that runs the advertising screens,” according to the BBC.
Before the suspect was arrested, there was some speculation on social media that the hacker was protesting government crackdowns on services such as YouTube and TikTok for allowing “indecent content.”
Kurdish news service Rudaw on Monday quoted Iraqi civil society activists and Baghdad residents who were horrified by the porn video, especially because it was probably seen by children.
“We call on the Iraqi government to protect Iraqi society, especially teenagers, because this will have a negative impact on teenagers,” Baghdad driver Salam Jabbar told Rudaw.
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