Get healthy online and care for your health.

Editor’s note: This article is from WeChat public account “ 爱 范 儿 ” ( ID: ifanr), author Li Haoran.

A few days ago, Twitter announced the cancellation of Animated PNG (Dynamic PNG) support previously added to mobile applications. The reason is that Twitter found that APNG can bypass the autoplay setting (equivalent to autoloading animation). For normal people, this loophole is of course not a big deal, and it even saves the trouble of clicking and playing the animation. But for patients with photosensitive epilepsy, these flashing, auto-playing motion pictures can cause them to develop symptoms of epilepsy.

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Twitter is not overreacting. There have been many cases in history where viewers were sent to the hospital for sudden epilepsy due to flashing images. The most famous is the “3D Dragon Incident” that occurred in Japan in 1997.

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Computer Warrior 3D Dragon in Pokémon

Japanese “3D Dragon Incident” in 1997

At 6:30 pm on December 16, 1997, Japanese children waited in front of the TV to wait for the latest “Pokemon” animation. At first, there was no abnormality until 6:51:34 Pikachu released a skill to strike a missile. After the missile exploded, the entire picture flashed continuously between red and blue. Under the constant stimulation of high-frequency red and blue light, many viewers immediately developed symptoms of dizziness, temporary blindness, and convulsions.

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Picture from Twitter @ rongtail / # ポ ケ モ ン シ ョ ッ ク 20th anniversary

According to statistics from the Japanese fire department later, 658 children were unsuitable for medical treatment that night. Although most of them returned to normal on their way to the hospital, 150 children were still admitted to the hospital. This incident caused a great uproar in society. For the first time, people realized that electronic products could cause so much damage and impact on people.

To prevent similar incidents from happening again, episode 38 of Pokémon has been permanently suspended, and Pokémon itself has been suspended for almost a year. NHK teamed up with Japanese private broadcasters and added a familiar warning at the beginning of the TV program: “Please brighten the indoor lights when watching, please stay away from the TV.”

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In addition to the current reminder slogan in the festival, Japanese TV stations and the government department in charge of medical care have formulated a series of rules, hoping to prevent the recurrence of the “3D Dragon Incident” through standardized production. This includes requirements such that the red image flash rate cannot exceed 3 times per second, the non-red image flash rate cannot exceed 5 times per second, and the flashing image cannot be displayed for more than two seconds.

Since then, there have been no more severe cases of photosensitive epilepsy like the “3D Dragon Incident”.

Photographic epilepsy victims also appear in the gaming world

However, this does not mean that patients with photosensitive epilepsy can rest easy. In addition to TV programs that have caused photosensitive epileptic seizures, similar events have occurred many times in the history of games. Until now, we can also see game manufacturers (such as Ubisoft) remind players in the game start screen:

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These slogans are not displayed. During the development of Far Cry, Ubisoft had an accident in which the sound effects engineer caused epilepsy and died when he was dubbed into the game screen. The dim environment in the recording room and the fast flashing scenes in the game are very similar to the environment where players play the game at night.

Although many games remind players to pay attention to the brightness of the environment, news reports of seizures in the game can be seen almost every year on the Internet. On May 13, this year, a foreign “League of Legends” player feedbacked to the official and said: The kill / death effect in the trial mission of 2019 Mid-Season is very unfriendly to epilepsy patients. Stroboscopic lighting effects may trigger photosensitive epileptic seizures.

In order to solve this problem, the official directly announced the removal of this special effect to prevent players from causing discomfort. This is just one of the cases of epilepsy caused by games. There are many similar examples. For example, the previous World of Warcraft 8.0 mission induced players with light-sensitive epilepsy and so on.

Most of the above events are due to design omissions leading to the onset of photosensitive epilepsy patients, and the designers did not think that they would harm users. But there are always people with impure motivations in the world.

Some people attack photosensitive epilepsy via social networks

In 2016, a U.S. man intentionally sent a flickering GIF image to Kurt Eichenwald, a journalist with epilepsy, and caused Kurt Eichenwald’s seizures.

After Twitter released the APNG function last month, someone took advantage of the bug that APNG would automatically play. A high-speed flashing APNG picture was intentionally produced and placed under the Epilepsy Foundation account. I want to automatically play the high-speed flashing screen through APNG to induce epilepsy patients who browse the Epilepsy Foundation Twitter account through the screen. Although there is no specific report on whether someone is successful, using APNG to attack patients with photosensitive epilepsy is undoubtedly a typical example of using technology to do evil.

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Official Twitter Accessibility

After this incident, Twitter turned off the APNG function and issued an announcement saying “this is forEnsuring the safety of people sensitive to motion and flickering images, including those with epilepsy. “Although Twitter ’s decisive action has not further fermented the event, in a world full of electronic screens, photosensitive epilepsy will inevitably encounter Unfavorable condition.

After all, many people don’t know they have the disease until they have a light-sensitive seizure.

If you have dizziness, unconscious shaking and other symptoms when the screen flickers suddenly, you still have to look at your computer phone less, live a healthy life and pay attention to rest. This is the best choice to stay away from epilepsy. If you don’t have the problem of photosensitive epilepsy, please understand the pain of some patients, and don’t spread the animations and pictures that can cause seizures.