Man's Quest for 1K Likes Sends Him to Prison

A man in Algeria apparently picked a terrible way to get attention on social media—and now he'll pay for it in prison. On Monday an Algerian court sentenced the unnamed man to two years after he posted to Facebook a photo of himself dangling a baby out of a 15th-story window in an attempt to get "likes," reports Al Arabiya English. The photo shows the baby being held by a single hand outside the apartment building in the capital city of Algiers over the caption "1000 likes or I will drop him." The BBC reports that other social media users quickly denounced the photo, and police charged the man with endangering the life of a child when they arrested him on Sunday.

The man, who is a cousin of the baby's, swears the whole thing was a misunderstanding. The Independent reports he told Algeria's Ennahar TV the photo was manipulated by Facebook users to make it look worse than it actually was, claiming the "protective barriers" that were present were digitally removed. The boy's father also said he believed the man was just being playful and asked the court for mercy. Last week another man was jailed over photos shared to Facebook. (More Algeria stories.)