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Epilepsy Patient Assaulted Via Twitter

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

FakeBeldin writes:

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)?

Original Submission

 
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  • (Score: 2) by TheLink on Sunday December 18 2016, @08:01PM

    by TheLink (332) on Sunday December 18 2016, @08:01PM (#442787) Journal
    There's no need to download everything. Could just check the buffer and stop playing or turn on a filter (e.g a "deflicker"/average filter- like the deinterlace stuff) if something seems like it might cause a problem. Most video streams get buffered anyway.

    Maybe someone could create such a plugin. Problem is it won't catch everything for everyone. Maybe some tuning depending on the person. Is it common for fits to also be triggered if it's alternating blue/red of the same brightness, and not just dark/bright?
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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 18 2016, @09:41PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 18 2016, @09:41PM (#442826)

    That's a pretty good idea. "Just in time" detection seems a lot more do-able.

    As for the question of what specific sequences, I think it probably depends on the patient. It wouldn't be hard to optionally detect a variety of patterns.