Zoom meeting on SEA Games by Singapore Athletics disrupted, obscene material flashed on screen

SINGAPORE — An online meeting by Singapore Athletics (SA) held to inform coaches, parents, athletes and the media on the selection criteria for major games next year was briefly disrupted on Thursday (Nov 5) with obscene material shown on screen.

TODAY — which had a reporter among media representatives in attendance — looked on as obscene drawings resembling male private parts appeared on a shared screen within the first five minutes of the Zoom meeting.

After the administrators took a short break to try to rectify the issue, the screen was shared a second time, and a similar obscene drawing again appeared on the screen.

At the same time, a nameless profile joined the meeting and began to display pornography to the almost 50 participants present at the virtual meeting.

This happened over the course of less than five minutes before the administrators resolved the issue by removing the perpetrator from the meeting.

Mr Lien Choong Luen, president of SA who led the meeting, told TODAY later: “We were able to address the situation by updating some of the settings on the spot — for example, annotation rights and speaking rights — and evicting the responsible parties.”

Mr Lien, whose team was in September elected to helm SA, said that in general, there are different Zoom formats that set restrictions for interaction with the community, such as limiting some participants’ speaking rights.

“In this smaller group, we took a less restrictive approach as we wanted to have a smoother interaction,” he added.

“Overall, it was a distraction, but we will take greater note of these protective settings in future.”

The meeting was held for SA to outline the criteria for selection for the upcoming Southeast Asian Games to be held next year in Vietnam, and the postponed Olympic Games to be held next year in Tokyo.

EDITOR'S NOTE: The story and headline of the article were updated to better reflect the nature of the incident.