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posted by cmn32480 on Sunday December 18 2016, @06:52PM   Printer-friendly
from the physical-assault-in-a-virtual-world dept.

Newsweek journalist Kurt Eichenwald, who is known to be suffering from epilepsy, reported on twitter that someone tweeted him a seizure-inducing image. This is not the first time it happened, but this attempt was (apparently) successful in triggering a seizure.

This might be the first physical attack on a person perpetrated via the internet. A sad point in history, in my view.

Links: coverage from Ars Technica, Eichenwald's Twitter feed. I'm not linking to the offending image - you're big enough to find it on your own and apparently it is quite horrible even for people who do not suffer from epilepsy.

Eichenwald has tweeted that he is involving law enforcement.

Any ideas on how hard it would be to filter out seizure-inducing media (make it click-to-view/play)?


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  • (Score: 2) by FakeBeldin on Sunday December 18 2016, @07:16PM

    by FakeBeldin (3360) on Sunday December 18 2016, @07:16PM (#442759) Journal

    Yup, that'd work... but what I was wondering is can we make a plugin that loads all sorts of non-seizure-inducing contents but has "click-to-play" over seizure inducing contents?

    So something a little more tailored to the problem than just blocking all images and videos.
    Also because it's hard to tell by the first frame if it'll be seizure-inducing - an attacker could easily craft a GIF or video to have the first few frames benign.

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  • (Score: 5, Touché) by BK on Sunday December 18 2016, @07:29PM

    by BK (4868) on Sunday December 18 2016, @07:29PM (#442766)

    While we're at it, could we make a plugin that filters out things on the internet made by dumb people? And by any incarnation of Ethanol-Fueled? And by people who are wrong [xkcd.com]? And SPAM - can all of that be filtered? And also anything that might harm my precious little snowflake psyche or make me feel bad?

    Good grief.

    --
    ...but you HAVE heard of me.
    • (Score: 2, Funny) by Ethanol-fueled on Sunday December 18 2016, @09:40PM

      by Ethanol-fueled (2792) on Sunday December 18 2016, @09:40PM (#442824) Homepage

      Filtering SN user comments should be trivial, in fact, I'm pretty sure somebody's already developed a greasemonkey extension or something to do it.

      Also, a joke: What do you do when an epileptic falls into a swimming pool?

      Throw in some detergent and your dirty laundry!

      Nyuk nyuk nyuk.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 19 2016, @02:41AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 19 2016, @02:41AM (#442917)

      "While we're at it, could we make a plugin that filters out things on the internet made by dumb people? "

      Easily. If the byte received is greater than the value 0, move it to device null.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 18 2016, @07:39PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 18 2016, @07:39PM (#442771)

    All embedded animated GIFs are seizure-inducing.

    • (Score: 1) by Francis on Sunday December 18 2016, @10:21PM

      by Francis (5544) on Sunday December 18 2016, @10:21PM (#442839)

      Not true, sometimes they give you a stroke.

  • (Score: 2, Informative) by khallow on Sunday December 18 2016, @07:51PM

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Sunday December 18 2016, @07:51PM (#442781) Journal

    Yup, that'd work... but what I was wondering is can we make a plugin that loads all sorts of non-seizure-inducing contents but has "click-to-play" over seizure inducing contents?

    While googling around, I see that there are already proprietary tests out there for detecting seizure-inducing video (for example, the Harding test [wikipedia.org]). It wouldn't be hard for a plug in to run all video through such a test before playing it, particularly on system/pipelines with adequate buffering. I don't know if anyone is already doing it, but if they're pretty far along, if it's not currently happening.

    • (Score: 2) by Pino P on Monday December 19 2016, @01:03AM

      by Pino P (4721) on Monday December 19 2016, @01:03AM (#442885) Journal

      there are already proprietary tests out there [...] It wouldn't be hard for a plug in to run all video through such a test before playing it

      Of course it would, because the test is proprietary and paywalled: 25 GBP for a video under 2 minutes (source [hardingtest.com]). A plug-in targeted at people with photosensitive epilepsy would run up a bill that I doubt health insurers would be willing to pay.

      • (Score: 1) by khallow on Monday December 19 2016, @09:59AM

        by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Monday December 19 2016, @09:59AM (#443042) Journal
        Eh, I gather the test requirements that the Harding Test implements are open source. So open source tests could be possible.
        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 19 2016, @08:21PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 19 2016, @08:21PM (#443304)

          Requirements are here [slyip.com].