Commuters in Washington, D.C.’s Union Station saw something rather unexpected Monday, as a display screen inside the station began playing a rather explicit PornHub video for about three minutes. Here’s a news report on it from NBC 4 Washington:
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The video in question can be seen here at Gizmodo, and it’s definitely not something you’d expect on a commute. As The Washington Post‘s Martine Powers notes, these boards are usually used for a combination of digital advertising and public service announcements. The Union Station Redevelopment Corporation’s CEO told Powers they’re looking into what happened:
Beverley Swaim-Staley, president and CEO of the Union Station Redevelopment Corp. (USRC), said Tuesday that the she was aware of the incident and had requested information from the company that leases and manages the property, Ashkenazy Acquisition Corp.
“We’ve asked them to certainly investigate the incident to make sure this doesn’t happen again,” Swaim-Staley said.
Swaim-Staley said that the screens have had a few glitches, though none of those problems were quite as jarring as Monday night’s incident.
“The downside with new technology is that it comes with new risks,” she said.
The screen will remain off until officials determine that they are able to prevent further video infiltration in the future, Swaim-Staley said.
As for Pornhub, one of their vice-presidents provided quite the statement to Gizmodo’s Sophie Kleeman:
“Pornhub is accessed by nearly 75 million fans across the world each day. It’s entirely possible the perpetrator of this incident was an avid fan who was perusing our content and unfortunately mishandled the technology behind the video screen at Union Hall. While we don’t condone such behavior — by any means — whatsoever, especially broadcasting unwarranted material to innocent passersby, we do hope it provided some…relief…in the midst of a hellacious commute home.”
“Relief” indeed.
[Gizmodo]
