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Ok, this will be a rather personal rant, but with broader context anyway.

First, the immediate story. Yesterday a science promoting profile on Facebook posted an epileptogenic image in their post. There is no way to avoid such images on your wall except for unfollowing a profile that is known to post those or not having social media account in the first place. I got no answer from the page owner to my query about hiding such images behind a warning and one guy thought it "funny" to send me a PM with yet another epileptogenic image.

Now the actual rant - I'm a photosensitive epileptic. Neither Google, nor Facebook or Twitter recognise epileptogenic imagery as problematic to the point, where Google will kindly show you those in image suggestion part of the result if you try to seek information about any photosensitivity awareness campaigns and blatantly let you search for "epigifs". Neither Facebook nor Twitter have a reporting categories for such content or directed attacks. Portals like 9gag even accept the infamous "epipepsi' gif and do nothing when such gifs are reported.

The overall awareness about photosensitivity is so low, that even one of the biggest science promoting channel, Veritasium, has an episode in which he shows a closeup of colour strobe eye exam without any prior warning whatsoever. Half of the action movies' final scenes take place during a thunderstorm. MCU Spiderman final duel takes place on a plane with mosaic strobe panels, and Incredibles 2 main villain has a strobe power and Disney never put any warning even when criticised, some theatres had put warning signs themselves.

It happily ended with "just" partial seizures for me this time, but come on, how come a problem that concerns about 11 milion people worldwide is so neglected when it is really a health or even live threatening issue?

If you know you are photosensitive please, do not google for any examples of epigifs. AND DO NOT POST EXAMPLES HERE even in spoiler tags!

And anticipating eventual advice - yes, I'm on a medication that directly addresses photosensitivity, but those drugs are not 100% effective and come with a heavy toll so there is always pros and cons consideration. And I know that I cannot expect the world to be 100% safe for me, but I simply cannot understand the scale of the ignorance on this issue.

Yikes.

Sorry I got nothing else.

I’m surprised they make it so easy for people to post those kinds of images. After that Pokémon episode that caused a lot of people to have seizures, I was under the impression that animators and movie studios were more careful to avoid animations or flashing lights that would cause seizures, even if only to avoid lawsuits. I had no idea major films were still dangerous.


I did know people on the internet were donkey-caves who would deliberately try to cause seizures, though. It’s infuriating the big social media companies aren’t responsive to complaints about, though.

The only media I know of, that scans all the content they intend to broadcast, is BBC, and if they identify any part as problematic they do not only put a warning on it, but actually demand it being re-cut where possible. The algorithm is based on the current knowledge about temporal, spatial and colour patterns causing problems and the algorithm is available to purchase by any vendor, but nobody else cares.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
I’m surprised they make it so easy for people to post those kinds of images. After that Pokémon episode that caused a lot of people to have seizures, I was under the impression that animators and movie studios were more careful to avoid animations or flashing lights that would cause seizures, even if only to avoid lawsuits. I had no idea major films were still dangerous.


I did know people on the internet were donkey-caves who would deliberately try to cause seizures, though. It’s infuriating the big social media companies aren’t responsive to complaints about, though.

I think the problem is its the kind of thing that if you don't suffer from it or have family/close friends who do, you forget about it. You see that warning at the start of a film or game and you either mentally blank it out or click past it. So it tends to come in swings - something like the Pokemon Episode sparks a wave that causes an outcry that gets attention and for a moment everyone becomes a bit more hyper aware; then things quieten down ; a new TV studio opens, a new website and before you know it people have become lax/forgetful.

I suppose we live in a world where corporate AI can effortlessly detect and censor one particular image of a man standing in front of a tank because it triggers our glorious chinese overlords, but doesn't give a damn about real medical conditions.

I won't try to find it now in case google will mistake my query and show me the images in question, but there was a well known case lately of deliberate attack via image on twitter, targeting a democrat congressman (or another public figure, I don't remember exactly). It sparked a discussion about legal basis for categorising this as a crime and grounds for a lawsuit in such cases. So this comes up quite often (about once every two years or so) but nothing ever changes for the better.

And now for warnings - those are often done half-assed. The best example here is the Autumn part of the "The Third Day" TV show. For those who don't know, this is a 12hrs long, single take recording of a theatre performance. It contains a scene of a concert with flashing lights, and there is a warning about photosensitivity content before the show alright, but without any time brackets. Couple of minutes out of 12hrs show and I cannot watch it myself without the assistance of a person, who can watch it before I do and identify the problematic part.

Often youtube creators (or even adult content creators!) know better how to handle this problem and couple of times I run into such creators taking time to explicitly specify time brackets for the sensitive part.

And as I've wrote, I can live with common folk not knowing better, but when supposedly broadly educated folks from science channels/blogs are so ignorant, I lose my confidence in being able to navigate the web safely.


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 lord_blackfang wrote:
I suppose we live in a world where corporate AI can effortlessly detect and censor one particular image of a man standing in front of a tank because it triggers our glorious chinese overlords, but doesn't give a damn about real medical conditions.

Exactly why this triggers me so much.

My Mum was seriously epileptic, and couldn’t do any kind of strobing. And it’s definitely a problem that shouldn’t exist when it comes to social media.

I’ve been tested for epilepsy a couple of times but it came up blank. Strobes still make me feel ill though.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
My Mum was seriously epileptic, and couldn’t do any kind of strobing. And it’s definitely a problem that shouldn’t exist when it comes to social media.

I’ve been tested for epilepsy a couple of times but it came up blank. Strobes still make me feel ill though.

I was epileptic when I was younger, but luckily 'grew out of it' - I haven't had a seizure or taken medication since my late teens. However strobe lights (and a few other things) do trigger headaches / migraines.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
My Mum was seriously epileptic, and couldn’t do any kind of strobing. And it’s definitely a problem that shouldn’t exist when it comes to social media.

I’ve been tested for epilepsy a couple of times but it came up blank. Strobes still make me feel ill though.

Hopefully it stays that way for you, epilepsy is rarely inheritable.

A lot of people react to strobes and patterns in non-seizure ways, mostly migraines and vertigo. But at least strobes give you time to react - after 30 years I have an involuntary reaction of closing my eyes and turning my head away from the source. Closing one eye if you have to navigate despite of the flashes (modern, LED based police/paramedics/firefighters lights are seriously a problem) is also an effective way to limit the risk. But there is little to do with patterns, as those are instantaneous. Some genius designed one of the metro stations here in Warsaw with walls in thin black and white stripes - an entire place finished with ceramic tiles with about 5mm wide, vertical stripes, everywhere around you. And despite media coverage on this (people got migraines and seizures there), the city did nothing with the problem.


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beast_gts wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
My Mum was seriously epileptic, and couldn’t do any kind of strobing. And it’s definitely a problem that shouldn’t exist when it comes to social media.

I’ve been tested for epilepsy a couple of times but it came up blank. Strobes still make me feel ill though.

I was epileptic when I was younger, but luckily 'grew out of it' - I haven't had a seizure or taken medication since my late teens. However strobe lights (and a few other things) do trigger headaches / migraines.

Youth epilepsy is actually quite common and there is no good theory why it fades before the age of 22. For about four years I had hopes that this was my case too, but I wasn't so lucky.

I'm sorry, that sounds terrible. I can't believe someone PM'd you a gif on purpose, that's despicable!

 Da Boss wrote:
I'm sorry, that sounds terrible. I can't believe someone PM'd you a gif on purpose, that's despicable!

Good thing I had a hunch and covered this part of the screen with my hand and only gradually looked at a small part, enough to identify, not enough to be exposed. Had to ask my wife to shut it though.

Forgive my ignorance but don't anime shows have some kind of filter put on them to limit seizures? Like when the fight scenes happen and the screen goes dim?

It's a shame there's not a filter option on google where an AI tries to identify and filter these images. If a company can pour millions into making anti-porn bots, surely they can make a bot that can identify repeating bright colours. And if anime shows have laws to add these features, I wonder if this can be pushed into more media.

 Mr Nobody wrote:
Forgive my ignorance but don't anime shows have some kind of filter put on them to limit seizures? Like when the fight scenes happen and the screen goes dim?

It's a shame there's not a filter option on google where an AI tries to identify and filter these images. If a company can pour millions into making anti-porn bots, surely they can make a bot that can identify repeating bright colours. And if anime shows have laws to add these features, I wonder if this can be pushed into more media.

I don't really know what filters are you talking about, because I don't watch anime exactly because seizure inducing was/is a problem with many animations (GW's recent black-white-red one including). What is important in this context is that "strobe" when it comes to photosensitivity can be as slow as 3Hz, most people would not recognise it as a strobe effect. Generally animations are a can of worms - e.g. glitches and chromatic aberration effects in "Into the spiderverse" are pretty much murder for a photosensitive person. Same goes with games: I would really like to play Mechanicus, but it's full of chromatic aberration effects everywhere and glitches without warnings. But here I have to give credit where the credit is due - I contacted the studio behind Mechanicus asking if they considered accessibility patch for photosensitive people and I at least got a response. Of course they were unaware of the problem and are busy with current projects, but at least promised to look into it. I don't expect them to deliver, but hey, they didn't have to respond, so that was nice.

You can always see if you can get enough people with similar conditions together to form a class action lawsuit against Facebook. Not sure what disability laws Poland/the EU have, but you could potentially bring it forward in the US under ADA.

chaos0xomega wrote:
You can always see if you can get enough people with similar conditions together to form a class action lawsuit against Facebook. Not sure what disability laws Poland/the EU have, but you could potentially bring it forward in the US under ADA.

Well, if US based Epilepsy Foundation could do squat when there was a targeted attack with political context, I seriously doubt if anything can be achieved in a general case against providers. You can read more about that case here https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/16/us/strobe-attack-epilepsy.html

Let’s also consider the dangers.

Fitting sucks. Nobody enjoys it. But, with the right help they’re pretty survivable.

Now. Consider my Mumsy again. For years, she wasn’t allowed to drive. Well into my lifetime. But eventually, the cocktail of pills she took every morning meant she went long enough without an episode to be allowed back behind the wheel.

She remained without episode until her dying day. But.

She had to be very careful when driving at night, because depending on the road layout (we lived in ruralish Kent, so think lots of country lanes. Narrow and bumpy. That could, depending on the stretch of road and strength of oncoming headlights, create an unpleasant situation for her.

This of course was before social media. But consider this. I’m riding shotgun, the driver is photosensitive.

I’m watching my shows on my iPad rather than being sociable (let’s say I’m a spotty teenage Herbert). Suddenly a strobing effect kicks in. Whilst not being directly viewed, that can still trigger an episode. I trust folk can see the potential outcome there. Nobody in the car did anything wrong - yet horror could ensue.

All because social media companies are feckless.

Unfortunately, for this kind of thing the pressure to act only really ramps up if you can point to a substantial body count. Definately feel for you, and it’s good to get any communication out there in a well thought out form if only to point out how individuals can be affected by specific things that most people don’t really need to think about.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Let’s also consider the dangers.

Fitting sucks. Nobody enjoys it. But, with the right help they’re pretty survivable.

Now. Consider my Mumsy again. For years, she wasn’t allowed to drive. Well into my lifetime. But eventually, the cocktail of pills she took every morning meant she went long enough without an episode to be allowed back behind the wheel.

She remained without episode until her dying day. But.

She had to be very careful when driving at night, because depending on the road layout (we lived in ruralish Kent, so think lots of country lanes. Narrow and bumpy. That could, depending on the stretch of road and strength of oncoming headlights, create an unpleasant situation for her.

This of course was before social media. But consider this. I’m riding shotgun, the driver is photosensitive.

I’m watching my shows on my iPad rather than being sociable (let’s say I’m a spotty teenage Herbert). Suddenly a strobing effect kicks in. Whilst not being directly viewed, that can still trigger an episode. I trust folk can see the potential outcome there. Nobody in the car did anything wrong - yet horror could ensue.

All because social media companies are feckless.

Indeed, being photosensitive is akin to living on a minefield nowadays and no matter how careful you are, you are bound to bump onto triggers every now and then. Turning to LED technologies worsened it a lot. Back in the days of tungsten light, when you wanted to make a coloured light, you had to put a filter on it. You also didn't want to loose too much brightness, so those filters only shifted the still contiguous spectrum towards desired colour. Nowadays, with LEDs, the spectrum of coloured light is partial, so stimulates your visual cortex in an artificial way. And if you mix two colours of those in a pub or a restaurant, you get coloured shadows that effectively work like chromatic aberration effect, basically turning everything around you into a murder weapon . To make it even worse, if you go cheap on the LEDs, they actually flicker with the mains power frequency - a lot of rural areas in Poland invested in such "modern, eco friendly" solutions in early times of LED boom, so there are large swathes of Poland where I can't go anywhere after dark. Many modern pseudo-neon logos are cheap LEDs and flicker. The list goes on and on, but all of those thing don't jump at you when you're unprepared and you can avoid them. Images on social media? Not so much...


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 Flinty wrote:
Unfortunately, for this kind of thing the pressure to act only really ramps up if you can point to a substantial body count. Definately feel for you, and it’s good to get any communication out there in a well thought out form if only to point out how individuals can be affected by specific things that most people don’t really need to think about.

Up to this point I though so, yes, and I'll keep educating people in my immediate surroundings, but after this little adventure of mine I'm not sure anymore, if educational campaigns won't make this problem worse. Because all it takes is one "prankster" posting the image in, e.g. a comment section under GW's Rumour Engine to hit numerous people like me at once. So maybe it's for the better that most people don't realise how easy it is to remotely assault a photosensitive person...


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I would like to thank you all for support. However much toxic Dakka can be sometimes, it is good to know, that there is an online place, where I won't get the most useful advice of "turn off the internet if you are so sensitive" (that's a literal quote) or risk another exposure from some idiot.

I think there have been a lot less dangerous and damaging things changed at the bequest of a few than this. Things get changed all the time when a person or small group shouts loud enough, and believe me, lawsuits get action.

Now that I am aware, I will do what I can, but definitely a talk with an attorney (the right one) can get either a class-action or suit against the known damaging effects with injury and punitive damages, as they have allowed this to continue.

 MDSW wrote:
I think there have been a lot less dangerous and damaging things changed at the bequest of a few than this. Things get changed all the time when a person or small group shouts loud enough, and believe me, lawsuits get action.

Now that I am aware, I will do what I can, but definitely a talk with an attorney (the right one) can get either a class-action or suit against the known damaging effects with injury and punitive damages, as they have allowed this to continue.

As I wrote above (read the article linked above), this has been attempted, with little results. You might have a chance against an individual if the attack resulted in direct harm, but not against a company that is protected by current laws from any responsibility for hosting a content posted by a third party.

Also, a thing you are probably not aware of, but outside of US there is no culture of suing everybody for everything, because, in general, there are no compensations involved, only penalties. Under polish law you might get a return of legal costs, maybe a small overhead on top of that, but even that is unlikely. And the case would slog for 3-5 years or so. I would go through the hell of it only if this direct attack resulted in a grand mal seizure, but as it is now, I have near zero chances of even getting the case to start. The state of the law here in Poland is a joke and because both the science profile and the assailant are polish citizens I could only take the path of going through all polish court instances (there are four of them) and only then finally gain the right to push it to the EU court.

I wonder if there might be a market for some sort of browser plugin that automatically would block potentially photosensitive images. I imagine it would have to be a possibility.

edit: There actually is just such a thing.

Epilepsy Blocker is a Chrome plugin that analyzes gifs and pictures for potential photosensitive issues and blocks them.

 Grey Templar wrote:
I wonder if there might be a market for some sort of browser plugin that automatically would block potentially photosensitive images. I imagine it would have to be a possibility.

edit: There actually is just such a thing.

Epilepsy Blocker is a Chrome plugin that analyzes gifs and pictures for potential photosensitive issues and blocks them.

Sadly, that is for GIFs only, does not filter static images and in this history both images were static. I have a script installed that filters all the GIFs after encountering an „epipepsi” one on 9gag.

The UK Online Safety Bill is being run through the system just now. There appears to be a range of controversy about it, which I don;t want to get into, but it is explicitly considering making the following a criminal offence:

" deliberately sending flashing images to those with epilepsy, with the goal of causing a seizure"

Hopefully this is heartening in so far as it at least seems to be on legislative radar somewhere.

nou wrote:
The overall awareness about photosensitivity is so low, that even one of the biggest science promoting channel, Veritasium, has an episode in which he shows a closeup of colour strobe eye exam without any prior warning whatsoever. Half of the action movies' final scenes take place during a thunderstorm. MCU Spiderman final duel takes place on a plane with mosaic strobe panels, and Incredibles 2 main villain has a strobe power and Disney never put any warning even when criticised, some theatres had put warning signs themselves.

I have no experience with photosensitivity (to my knowledge, to one I know has it), but watching that Incredibles 2 scene in theaters was visual torture. I can't imagine what it would be like for a photosensitive person to be surprised by it. Genuinely have no fething idea what Disney was thinking, but it's definitely a problem.