In an absolutely dumbfounding and very entertaining incident to occur at a Democrat congressman’s expense, Los Angeles area-based Rep. Brad Sherman (D-CA) tried blaming it on the algorithm after a fellow passenger on a flight caught him looking at an explicit picture on his tablet during the flight.
What happened was that an account posted pictures of Rep. Sherman scrolling through his X (formerly Twitter) feed on his tablet during the flight, with a series of explicit pictures being on his screen that he scrolled through, neither hiding his screen nor scrolling away once the explicit pictures popped up.
Posting the pictures proving what the congressman was up to and calling him out for it, an account on X that appeared to be sitting near him, or to have gotten pictures from someone who did, said, “Why did California Congressman Brad Sherman feel it was appropriate to look at porn on his iPad during a flight today? His district deserves better representation than this!! #CA32”
After the post went viral, it was followed up on by Punchbowl News reporter and co-founder John Bresnahan, who said that Rep. Sherman had tried to pass the incident off as being Elon Musk’s fault, as the images had popped up on his “For You” tab. That is an interesting excuse, as the content shown by the “For You” tab is primarily generated based on what content you have interacted with in the past.
In any case, Bresnahan, posting about what he was told during his interview with the California Democrat, said, “Sherman denied repeatedly that he was looking or pornography or has a problem with pornography. Sherman said these photos came up in ‘Twitter feed’ under the ‘For You’ heading.”
Bresnahan continued, writing, “Sherman: ‘This was on Twitter. These pictures came up on ‘For You.’’ ‘I must’ve looked at more than 1000 posts’ during his flight, Sherman said.” He further continued, “I asked Sherman if it was appropriate for a congressman to be looking at this openly on a plane. ‘Is it pornography? I don’t think Elon Musk thinks so. Is it appropriate? No.’”
Adding yet further to that, Bresnahan reported that he asked Rep. Sherman, “Do you have a problem with pornography?” and was told, “No, I don’t have a problem.” Rep. Sherman then reportedly told him that he was fed the pictures “because of the algorithms” and “If you have to fly across the country, you look at a lot of stuff on your tablet.” The representative also reportedly said, “If I see a picture of a woman, might I look at it longer than a sunset? Yeah.”
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Calling out the Congressman’s excuse, one commenter on X said, “The algorithm isn’t going to put it in your feed if it’s not something you frequently view. So either he watches it a lot or he watches it a lot!” Similarly, another such commenter calling out the congressman wrote, “Weird I don’t have this type of content in my for you page and I’m terminally on X.”