SoylentNews

Epilepsy Patient Assaulted Via Twitter

posted by cmn32480 on Sunday December 18 2016, @06:52PM   
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

• Re:Half the Story, as usual (Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 18 2016, @09:31PM

  by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 18 2016, @09:31PM (#442818)

  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurt_Eichenwald [wikipedia.org]

  In 2005, Eichenwald wrote a group of articles about online child pornography. One of those articles was about Justin Berry, a then-18-year-old who was selling pornographic images and videos of himself both as a minor and as an adult, creating and selling pornography involving other minors and adults. Eichenwald stated in testimony before Congress that his contact with Berry began as an effort by him, his wife, and his minister to rescue someone who seemed like a child in danger. He stated that it was only a month later, when Berry contacted him saying he wanted to expose the child pornography business, that he began reporting on the story. This led to criticism because, during the time Eichenwald was working to rescue Berry, he—along with his wife and minister—decided to pretend they were Berry's customers and use money to convince him to identify himself. Once Eichenwald began reporting, he demanded repayment because of the potential conflict of interest. However, Eichenwald only asked for $2,000 that was paid by check to be returned; he later stated he did not remember another $1,100 was paid through PayPal. Berry did not return that money. In an October 19, 2007 interview with NPR's David Folkenflik, Eichenwald stated that, due to the severe backlash from the Justin Berry story, he felt compelled to disclose that his epilepsy had caused "severe memory disruptions" and that he had a "deeply unreliable memory for names, facts and events" which he compensated for by his "meticulous reporting methods."

  Parent

  Starting Score:	0		points
  Moderation		+2
  Interesting=1, Informative=1, Total=2
  Extra 'Interesting' Modifier		0
  Total Score:		2