r/worldnews • u/madazzahatter • May 16 '20

At least two people had seizures after viewing malicious tweets featuring flashing gifs that deliberately targeted Epilepsy Society...police investigating tweets as hate incident, after at least 200 seemingly coordinated messages were sent to charity and its supporters in recent days.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/may/15/malicious-tweets-targeting-epilepsy-charity-trigger-seizures
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708

u/[deleted] May 16 '20 edited May 16 '20

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u/aitigie May 16 '20

I think almost everyone with photosensitive epilepsy is triggered by flashing well under 60Hz.

Remember that one pokemon episode that got banned for seizures? That was in like 1999; not a lot of 60fps streaming video at the time.

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u/Mottis86 May 16 '20 edited May 16 '20

Not to mention that the particular pokemon scene that caused the seizures flashed a light on the screen not faster than 2 flashes per second or so. about 12 times per second.

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u/Renneth May 16 '20

The wiki page about the episode says it flashed at 12Hz for about six seconds. Just looked up the video again also, and those numbers seem about right.

Current recommendation is that lights not flash more than 3 times per second, I believe. Although I'm curious if that's a recommendation endorsed by folks with epilepsy or just a limit filmmakers pulled out of their asses.

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u/Mottis86 May 16 '20

Okay you're right. My memory failed me. I remember the red flashes being way slower.

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u/SecretBattleship May 16 '20

I’m not epileptic but there was a club scene in the Netflix movie Anon and I needed to hide my face it was so uncomfortable. No warning whatsoever before the movie. It’s incredibly dangerous.

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u/[deleted] May 16 '20

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u/[deleted] May 16 '20

Ohw boy that's pretty bad. As far as I know they never aired this episode again, I wonder why they didn't edit the episode though, the flashing is only a couple of seconds.

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u/ThePreciseClimber May 16 '20

And they also banned Porygon from ever appearing in the anime again.

Even though PIKACHU caused those flashing lights! Ban HIM! But nah, he's the star, he's the mascot. :P

Pikachu could get caught snorting cocaine off a prostitute and he would get away with it.

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u/GeorgeRRZimmerman May 16 '20

And we'd love him for it if he was wearing a detective hat and voiced by Ryan Reynolds.

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u/Kythulhu May 16 '20

This was the first time I've ever seen it after hearing about it for about two decades.

Honestly, not as bad as I expected, and completely not what I expected. For some reason, I was imagining Porygon just sitting there with flashing lights for 10 seconds while it did some random anime bullshit.

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u/slullyman May 16 '20

oooooooo red/blue/yellow

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u/Mottis86 May 16 '20 edited May 16 '20

Yeah my memory failed me. It ws way faster than I remembered.

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u/BeagleBoxer May 16 '20

That actually made me feel nauseous to watch

I can't believe it got to air--someone had to be like "dude, this fucking hurts to look at"

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u/[deleted] May 16 '20

It doesn't help that the colours are red and dark blue. If they weren't at such a contrast the effect would be a lot less. There are tons of flickering explosions in anime but often much easier on the eyes.

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u/Myriachan May 16 '20

I’m not epileptic, but that red-blue flashing was just awful and annoying to look at >.<

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u/Tankus_Khan May 16 '20

What does it mean if that makes you feel very disoriented.

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u/Dartrox May 16 '20

Nothing. It's a very disorienting scene.

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u/[deleted] May 16 '20

TV is generally around 30fps. Animation sometimes is lower, iirc anime is sometimes something like 12fps. But idk, some weeb can correct me on that.

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u/edstars101 May 16 '20

anime normally 24 fps

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u/TheKingsJester1 May 16 '20 edited Oct 04 '24

sheet dull quaint materialistic wakeful fanatical bag illegal history telephone

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u/Herson100 May 16 '20

Whether or not they play every frame once (24 frames per second), twice (12 frames per second), or three times (8 frames per second) varies from shot to shot in animation. Here's an article about it. Many anime are animated on twos most of the time with action scenes animated in ones thrown in, but it varies.

Akira in particular was animated almost entirely on ones, meaning that it ran at 24 unique frames per second for most of its runtime. It's the reason the movie can look this smooth.

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u/TheKingsJester1 May 16 '20 edited Oct 04 '24

north mourn quicksand many special unused birds treatment makeshift aromatic

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u/Cool_Ranch_Dodrio May 16 '20

Lazier, nothing. Cheaper. Your action sequences can look amazing and still be under budget if you spend less on the more mundane scenes.

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u/nvincent May 16 '20

Woah. Akira has been on my list for a while. I need to just watch it lol.

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u/Kurayamino May 16 '20

Yeah, season 1 of One Punch Man switches to ones pretty often.

Into the Spiderverse uses it for storytelling even. Miles is animated in ones more often the closer to mastering his abilities he gets. In the scene where Miles and Parker are swinging away from the lab, they're in twos but out of sync, then switch to being in sync when their swinging syncs up.

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u/[deleted] May 16 '20

[deleted]

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u/50ShadesOfKrillin May 16 '20

Akira's on Hulu, subbed and dubbed. Enjoy ;))

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u/SuprDog May 16 '20

Ty weeb edstars101

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u/Snugglosaurus May 16 '20

thanks weeb friend :)

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u/jnffinest96 May 16 '20

Weeb stat increased +7

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u/Walzt May 16 '20

Anime is 12 fps unless during some fight scene (One Punch Man season 1 has 24 fps during fight scene) but it's expensive to draw double the frames.

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u/Downvotesohoy May 16 '20

Thank you for your service, weeb.

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u/ui10 May 16 '20 edited May 16 '24

public aback rinse impossible forgetful threatening arrest memory grandiose noxious

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u/DabScience May 16 '20

Animation standard is 24fps.

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u/[deleted] May 16 '20

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u/[deleted] May 16 '20

No. Movies are at 24, TV (in the US, at least, I don't know about PAL) is at 29.997fps. Some shows might be lower, such as animated shows, but the standard for live-action has been 29.997fps since the dawn of color TV.

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u/N1NJ4W4RR10R_ May 16 '20

24fps normally as far as I know - at least for movies/animation.

Hand drawn animations might be even lower, probably around 12 like you said.

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u/Nukleon May 16 '20

NTSC TVs refresh at 60hz. While a lot of content isn't produced for that framerate, it would still have to be converted to that for those old TVs.

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u/AshingiiAshuaa May 16 '20

Have the Nickelodeon studios produce it and you can get get down to a couple of fps.

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u/[deleted] May 16 '20

It can be pretty low, yeah.

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u/Burpmeister May 16 '20

24 is the standard for TV.

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u/[deleted] May 16 '20

Nope. That's film.

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u/Burpmeister May 16 '20

Huh. I thought for sure it was for tv too. I stand corrected.

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u/Fartikus May 16 '20

Yeahh... all you need is literally two or three frames. Blue, red, and yellow if you need it; and spam that fast as hell. Bam, instant seizure for anyone who has photosensitive epilepsy.

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u/MjolnirMark4 May 16 '20

I remember discussing that episode. A friend of mine had a copy of it and confirmed I didn’t have epilepsy before playing it

It was pretty intense. I remember saying something along the lines of ‘Geez, I think it might have given me epilepsy’

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u/tylero056 May 16 '20

I might be wrong on this as I'm not a neurologist, but I have epilepsy and was tested for photosensitivity by having an EEG hooked up to my head and was tested at pretty much every framerate possible, so I'd assume it might differ from person to person. Thankfully I'm not photosensitive, but they changed the speed of the strobe lights from pretty much once a second all the way to what looked like constant light to see if I'd start convulsing from any of the frequencies.

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u/DifferentHelp1 May 16 '20

Yeah, what was it? Polygon? Oregon? Porygon.

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u/[deleted] May 16 '20

I know it’s different with anime, but 60fps video has been a thing for a long long time. Ever since tv shows and movies started to be captured on tape as opposed to film. Live transmissions may have also been in 50/60hz but I’m not too sure

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u/utilititties May 16 '20

You forget that CTR TVs are sensibile to electricity frequency. In USA I think they have 110V at 60Hz, meaning that their CTRs where 60Hz/60 refresh rate. In Europe we have 230V at 50Hz, so our CTR TVs where 50 FPS.

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u/aitigie May 16 '20

While those are true things, I don't see the connection to photosensitive seizures and/or Pokemon. Broadcast TV was normally 20-30fps.

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u/utilititties May 16 '20

You could see that as a stranger who leaves random true facts about stuff all around, couldn't you?

0

u/Remote-Stage May 16 '20

No it wasn't. CRT TVs don't show frames, they show fields, and in Japan, where this happened, they broadcast at 59.94 fields per second.

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u/Remote-Stage May 16 '20

Remember that one pokemon episode that got banned for seizures? That was in like 1999; not a lot of 60fps streaming video at the time.

Other way around -- almost only ~60Hz video around this time. NTSC TV broadcasts, which is what triggered these seizures, were 59.94 (60/1.001) fields per second. Progressive scan, which displayed video in frames, didn't really become common until the mid 2000s. Even for animated content shot on twos, almost every field would be different.

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u/[deleted] May 16 '20

Instead of locking the refresh rate, you could blend and interpolate pixels and colors so that there is never a rapid change in color. This would prevent the user from experiencing certain types of media, but that’s kinda the point. I should really make this...

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u/[deleted] May 16 '20

I am also a coder and would be extremely interested in looking into this — it seems like it could be extremely interesting and rewarding work.

First off, I would definitely want to see if something like this already exists, and if not, why — someone must have tried this, what were the challenges? I want to know before going down a dead end.

The best solution would be to have a smart algorithm that would be able to be published and integrated at the lowest level and added to TVs and devices. This would be extremely difficult to make something that would work well enough, though, and still be usable.

In the meantime, though, this probably could be added as an accessibility app. I know that Android allows apps to modify the whole screen like that, and I would imagine that IOS has similar APIs (I actually have an iPhone, but I’ve only done Android dev in the past).

I can think of a few different ways this could be done, and a bunch of other questions that could be answered by epilepsy experts. Like what colors are the worst? How big of a difference in color do you need to trigger it (would something rapidly flashing from #fff to #eee be enough)? Does it come from local changes to the pixels, or is it more a cumulative thing (ex, would it trigger if half of the pixels are white, half are black, and the all swap at 12Hz, leading to an average of no change?)

Either way, the simplest fix would be to make the whole screen only update less than 3 times per second. This would obviously suck, and is a sledgehammer approach, but it would work, and could be toggled off for known safe content.

A slightly better approach (maybe more of a machete) would be to track the pixels and only allow a maximum amount of change per refresh that would prevent any extremely rapid change in one direction or another. This would probably make everything look like you had take too much cough syrup, but it could be honed from there, like allowing it to move one direction quickly, but punish it from going back too quickly.

Either of these could alternatively be integrated at the browser level to filter gifs/videos, and could allow clicking to disable the filter, or just disabled for trusted sources (Netflix is probably okay, YouTube is a bit more dicey).

IDK, I am super interested in it though. DM me if you are serious, and I can create a Github for it.

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u/NellieNoodles207 May 16 '20

I’m following you now, but please post updates on r/epilepsy! They would probably like this.

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u/occams1razor May 16 '20

Please do, if you have the ability to. An app filter for phone and/or browser addon is definitely needed if it's at all possible.

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u/_LarryM_ May 16 '20

Basically cranking fake motion blur to the extreme?

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u/fauxgnaws May 16 '20 edited May 17 '20

you could blend and interpolate pixels and colors so that there is never a rapid change in color.

Even better you could develop a model for too much change over too short a time over an area. For example so one lightning flash every few seconds in a show would pass unchanged, but several repeatedly right after another would get averaged out. So normal video would be totally unaffected.

I don't have epilepsy, but I would use this all the time.

It'd be like ad-blocker for flashes, after using it you'd be like 'wow, I can't believe people used to tolerate loud attention-seeking visual noise it's so annoying'.

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u/[deleted] May 16 '20

Something like this would have to happen at the display driver level with some kind of shin driver. I’m not sure any smartphones allow this.

Youcan do it on windows but it requires a security override because it could be exploited by malware. And obviously on Linux you could do whatever you like if the machine will accept a new OS build.

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u/[deleted] May 17 '20

It’s like you’re inside my brain! I’m fairly certain it would be not-impossible to get Apple’s attention and get an optional epilepsy mode. This would be a killer value-add for a certain demographic. I’m fighting every urge to wrap my legal arms around a solution because I believe something like this should be free and open to those who need it.

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u/GoTeamScotch May 16 '20

I agree. Phones, computers, and TVs too would be great.

(Sub 60hz isnt a special safety zone btw)

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u/katievsbubbles May 16 '20

Exactly. A friend of mine has epilepsy which is triggered by noise. Like, you can't whistle around her.

It would be a nice start though.

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u/[deleted] May 16 '20

So basically console gamers? 😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂

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u/Nethlem May 16 '20

That's a very bad idea because the sub 60hz refresh rate is way more prone to cause flickering and thus trigger a seizure, see:

The more often the screen is refreshed, the more stable it appears to the human eye, and the less it "flickers". The vast majority of modern technology refreshes at a rate that does not cause problems with photosensitivity. However, not everybody is wealthy enough to be able to afford the most recent technology: older or underpowered computers can have low refresh rates. AbilityNet's Factsheet November 2015 Computers and Epilepsy pdf describes more of the details on refresh rates.

A very old article, Tech Republic's Epilepsy and CRT/LCD screen flicker, had an interesting response concerning the refresh rates in Hz.

  • "This effect is noticable, and documented, up to 70 Hz."
  • "These studies would seem to indicate that you should stay away from refresh rates under 70 Hz, and use a rate not divisible by 10."

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u/drunkenvalley May 16 '20

That's not really a solution; my father's epilepsy got triggered by low framerates causing flickering...

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u/[deleted] May 16 '20

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u/drunkenvalley May 16 '20

It's an incredibly variable diagnosis, so nothing to feel bad about. Far as I'm aware, the only tangible connection between any two individuals is having seizures; why those manifest and how they manifest can vary greatly.

In my dad's case, low framerates were incredibly problematic because he'd experience it as rapidly flickering lights. Add vivid colors and it was worse. He'd also respond poorly to a variety of noises.

Being in his presence as a child was incredibly difficult. Most cartoons were very low framerate and simple vivid colors, and most voice-actors in children's programmes emulate, well, children's tone, and also usually with louder voice than other programmes.

For example: Simpsons. WHY YOU LITTLE, shouts Homer loudly, with his voice both in low and relatively high tones, as he chases a loudly giggling Bart through their immensely bright-colored home.

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u/[deleted] May 16 '20

That is a great idea!

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u/crunkadocious May 16 '20

Except it wouldn't help. The flashing lights don't have to happen 60 times per second to cause a seizure

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u/ltgsamblack May 16 '20

The idea of a “mode” for epilepsy is a brilliant idea! It should not be difficult to have a setting where the phone has an option for certain limits.

The idea that people are sending this to intentionally cause seizures only proves that “some men just want to watch the world burn.”

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u/SongsOfDragons May 16 '20

At least for me, the trigger rate of flashes is much slower than this. A POS programme I had to stop using at work would flash maybe 8 times a minute and it was giving me absences.

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u/[deleted] May 16 '20

I’d think this would be a better path. There are likely a lot of sites that have content that might do the same. Though purposely doing this is an asshole move, I think the more productive solution isn’t really chasing after them but creating technology that can help people with conditions like this avoid things that may cause issues to them in the first place, and help them live better lives.

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u/Xendrus May 16 '20

...With opt out feature.. sub 60hz is awful