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Twitter Will Hand Over Data On the User Who Sent a Seizure-Inducing Tweet To a Journalist (theverge.com)
Last week, an unidentified Twitter user tweeted a seizure-inducing animation at Newsweek and Vanity Fair writer Kurt Eichenwald, who has epilepsy. Now, Eichenwald has taken the first step toward identifying the user. In response to a civil suit filed by Eichenwald this week in Dallas district court, Twitter has agreed to hand over all relevant subscriber data for the user in question. The attack came in apparent retaliation for Eichenwald's aggressive coverage of President-elect Trump. From a report on the Verge: While Eichenwald has yet to file criminal charges, the civil suit was sufficient for an ex parte order from the district judge. Twitter subsequently agreed to expedited relief, declining to challenge the order or demand further evidence from Eichenwald. The next step is likely to be a lawsuit against wireless carriers or service providers implicated by Twitter's records, who will have records linking IP addresses and other metadata to the attacker's legal name.
Is it to late for me to file suit against the creators of all those geocities home pages I viewed back in the day?
So if someone with peanut allergies receives a candy bar with peanuts, they open it and take a bite. The sender is liable for damages?
When tweeting seizure-inducing animations becomes a crime, only criminals will tweet seizure-inducing animations.
Shouldn't we be aghast? We want tech companies to resist the courts, not comply.
...did the tweet actually cause him to have a seizure? Or did it just hurt his feelings?
I assume not but I would be curious if he actually looked at the tweet.
My heart says... go get that bastard who did this.
My head says... that's a violation of privacy expectations. No one expects their details to be released to other users of the system. In this case it was perhaps justified, but if they open the door there will be other requests for private information, some less just.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
Why didn't Twitter just hand over the information?! it's an obvious violation of the rules and a REAL health hazard and Twitter has full rights to the info anyway.
Yay - whoo - go Twitter?!
People with epilepsy will sue local police for turning on the lights and siren?
dont forget to inform his insurance agency he is using the internet and intentionally risking health issues
Twitter is an integral part of our new President's international relations strategy. Also, it is his new media outlet.
From what I nderstand, President Trump tweet his State of the Union addresses.
So people who intend to cause harm to an epileptic should be protected by companies? Interesting. What if you got a letterbomb via UPS and UPS was refusing to hand over info on the sender to the FBI, would you laud them for that?
If "seizure-inducing" speech is prosecutable now, we better all become "seizure-inducing haters", before the First Amendment is dead and buried.
They could not quite get at it with "hate speech" bans, they are attacking it with "seizures" now...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Isn't this protected by the bizarro 4th amendment?
I suppose, perhaps in the same sense that the stuff that comes out your butt is the same as "food," you could make the claim; but most people will give you Forest Whitaker eye when you try it.
Reading comprehension fail. This situation doesn't affect Twitter.
It's going to be around for at least 4 more years as it's the only way Trump can communicate with the outside world.
but they best not be animated or you can talk to my lawyer.
Is the target a cis heteronormative white male? #NoBadTactics #KillAllMen
It is perfectly common for people arguing online to develop a sincere (if fleeting) desire to physically harm an opponent. The deliberation and targeting are very easy to find. Usually such rage is impotent — or is it? If, as we are told by TFA, speech can cause a seizure, how about less obvious but still detrimental effects of spiting words and even polite expressions of disagreement?
If simply seeing the name "Trump" written in chalk on campus made some students "feel unsafe", should the perpetrators be prosecuted for the assault?
Folks in college today graduate a few years later — bringing their bogus ideas out with them. The Left's attack on speech is spilling from campuses... It may already be too late.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
If he's that sensitive to gifs, why is he using a browser with animations enabled by default. Only commenting about that, not all the other gory details of harassment.
So Twitter is now actively doxing people?
Applying your sort of logic:
I am not an epileptic. Therefore you are a lying scumbag.
Or just maybe, different people are different, and can have different reactions. Maybe you as an epileptic might even know that there are different kinds of epilepsy.
They are all seizure disorders and yes, I am calling him a lying piece of shit. When you seize, your wife doesn't usually take the time to login to your twitter account and tweet about your seizure. The guy is a pathological liar. Google his name and all the webs of lies he's been caught into for years.
How can an animation trigger a seizure with modern LCD display monitors? The panels don't flicker. Its supposed to be basically impossible....
Or maybe Twitter's lawyers and PR people realized that it would really bad press and/or bad for the stock price for the company to fight this.
It's not some left/right dichotomy here.
Mr. Hu is not a ninja.
Nope the LCD's framerate is plenty fast enough.
That said, I'm surprised this guy survived using the web for this long. I always thought epileptics used modified browsers to avoid being killed by these gifs, particularly obnoxious advertisements, and intentionally obnoxious websites.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
No, he can continue to hold his rallies, and get wall to wall coverage
You forgot the most important part: he attempted to manipulate a democratically held election. He deserves to be shot as a traitor at the very least.
so does that mean we all deserve to be shot for all the vote rigging, government overthrowing, and despot dictator supporting the US has engaged in during the past century in the name of anticommunism? if the government is by the people, the buck stops with us. We have overthrown democratically elected governments before.
You have no clue how a test of actual scientific value works. You are a complete moron. Now, if you repeat that test with a few 1000 people with different types and intensity of epilepsy and nobody has any ill effects, then there may be some validity to the hypothesis that he is lying.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
The display does not flicker, but what is displayed on it sure can.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
I never claimed that he did have a seizure, I pointed out that your argument was not a reasonable one, i.e. your lack of seizure is not proof that he did not have one.
Maybe you calling him a liar was not intended to be read as a conclusion of the the previous statement - but that's how I read it. And maybe you read my comment as me implying that he did in fact have a seizure, when I never said that. I merely said that by your logic, since I'm not epileptic I can say that you must be lying when you say you are.
Whether or not he is a "lying <your choice of offensive term here>" is irrelevant to the point I made. If you have some reference that would explain to me how all epileptic people respond exactly the same to every stimulus I'd be happy to read it.
This Kurt Eichenwald asshat should be using lynx. Then he cant be "attacked", also he needs to get a doctor to treat his neurosis.
>is sending an animation a criminal act?
It depends on the circumstances. If I offer you half an ounce of lead, it's not a criminal act. If I send it to you at 700MPH, the courts always seem to think that I meant you harm. It's just a bit of metal, so there should really be no restriction on how I offer it to you or how I obtained it - right?
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
First: a guy with epilepsy sends still images to someone who doesn't have epilepsy, multiple times since September. Victim is baffled. "Why are they doing this?!"
Second: Epileptic guy threatens to use his sorcerous powers resurrect victim, should victim ever die. Victim is terrified, "OMG, you're going to do to me, what the villain of "The Case of Charles Dexter Ward" did! And then -- plot twist -- the epileptic guy shows up on his doorstep as a shambling corpse, much like in "The Thing on the Doorstep."(BTW, these two HPL stories just happen have a lot of things in common. Coincidence?)
Third: Victim's daughter breaks into the epileptic guy's school, taking away messages intended for the epileptic guy. One of the messages has a virus, which the daughter downloads, chmod+x's and sudo executes. She is pwned.
The result: victim sues epileptic asshole, Slashdot supports.
Did the sender know that the recipient had a condition that would be triggered by the email?
That is the most amazing website ever! Its glory is undiminished by adblock, which is quite the achievement!
An intoxicated person cannot legally give consent, even if the person consented prior to intoxication and knowingly took the intoxicant. An inability to give consent while in the moment is legally an absence of consent, regardless of what happened before.
The victim might be guilty of criminal stupidity, but there is no mitigation of the rapist's guilt, in this case.
I could see those tables turning in some sort of entrapment case. "A" consumes a date-rape drug in secret, without anybody else knowing, and solicits B before the effects kick in (B having no idea any intoxication is involved). A then turns around and charges B with rape, and uses a positive date-rape-drug test as evidence.
Nobody would believe B's story, though.
A tweet felled a twat.
After all, it is causing actual real harm.
But also there should be some sort of seizure protection extension for the browsers.
Solving this particular issue would be very easy through a technological means.
All new users to twitter will be required to view this link first to determine whether or not their account will accept animated gifs.
NOTE: DON'T ACTUALLY CLICK THIS IF YOU'RE EPILEPTIC!
intentionally obnoxious websites
112 pounds a month for a fiat panda? Punch me in the balls, that's fucked.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
It's not some left/right dichotomy here.
What reality are you living in these days?
The flicker does not have to be very fast - well withing the refresh rate of any modern monitor. (I have epilepsy) I spent a lot of time in the neurology clinic having strobes flashed in my face by doctors. That really sucked, but the clinic was free.
The only time this ever happens is if a leftist is ever affected. If it harms a non-leftist, they'll defend it.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
I'll be snickering aplenty when the boot of the law is on the neck of these alt-right douchebags. You *will* learn that harming/harassing someone IRL will get your pathetic ass in jail.
If i were someone on twitter who was sensitive enough to have a seizure from a simple gif, i would NOT have gifs/videos autoplay. By default you have to click on the image to get it to play.
The image in question literally had "you deserve a seizure" on it. That's the sort of thing you don't click play on.
Its similar to knowingly walking into a nightclub and then trying to sue them for giving you a seizure.
Ah, your use of SAT-words makes me feel so inferior, I'm going to cry now... Your chops are so intimidating.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Eichenwald is a piece of shit that has no business in the news industry.
I was an epileptic, Eichenwald is almost certainly a lying scumbag. I was a sufferer of photosensitive epilepsy when I was a kid, and flashing images almost never triggered a seizure. In fact, they would just happen without any clear pattern of outside stimuli. It would just occur, and then I'd have a skull-splitting headache when it was over. Medication is highly effective in controlling this.
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
What reality are you living in these days?
Indeed, bringing someone to account for actual assault is apparently a left /right issue. The weird thing is, the usually "tough on crime" right wingers here seem to have gone all soft on crime all of a sudden.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
And so are you with regard to your claimed authority on the topic, or possibly your having the condition at all.
My grandmother was a visually-trigger epileptic. Apparently a bad one (though, the only one I know.)
Growing up with them, I witnessed 3 seizures induced simply from watching television before my grandfather removed the TV. This guy may in fact be lying, but your claim that you as an epileptic means there aren't epileptics worse than you makes you an imbecile, or dishonest. You choose which.
If thousands of people do this now due to the Streisand effect, how many would be prosecuted?
Growing up with an epileptic who was triggered by flashing lights (my grandmother), flashing images almost *always* triggered this.
In fact, we removed our television after the third seizure that was triggered from it.
I was in the car with her when she learned she had epilepsy - ambulance. She lost her license after that.
Medication did seem effective at controlling those, after a time.
Later in her life, she started going what seemed to be almost a full year between seizures. Though she was never really able to leave the house, and didn't watch television... so who knows.
Again, he may be a lying scumbag, but only an idiot thinks they know what the gold-standard for epilepsy is. It's a fucking spectrum disorder caused by any one or more of a dozen different barely understood problems with your brain circuitry. We categorize them together in ways that they are similar, but they may not even be caused by the same damn pathological problem.
I do know a lot about it, and I can tell you that while it's possible it's incredibly rare. I had to live with that shit through repeated blood tests to get medication right and multiple cat scans. This is first hand, not "i know a guy who knows a guy" so sit down and shut the fuck up. You haven't the faintest idea.
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
Step 1: label anything you disagree with as 'intent to harm' and wrongthink
Step 2: reveal the IP of anyone posting wrongthink to the police or to the public
Step 3: scream like an autistic person as the entire "alt-right" switches to VPNs, proxies and anonymizing services and becomes totally untraceable even for actual crimes and threats (i.e. not just posting a seizure gif)
how did you get that from a post that says 'i don't like twitter?'
The lawsuit will go nowhere. Then again, a lawsuit may not be the end game here. It's possible he just wants the person unmasked.
The man claims it caused a seizure, but without evidence to back it up, it's just a claim.
Now, handing out private user data based on one mans ( already questionable ) word is probably a very bad idea for Twitter lest they be held accountable for anything that may happen because of it.
Should you send folks seizure inducing imagery ? Probably not, but Twitter had better tread very carefully here. The potential for abuse is high and Twitter will be on the hook for it.
What is "consent"? If it is anything less than a written (signed and solemnly notarized) note, how do we know, Trump didn't have it?
When Trump makes a statement without bountiful evidence to back it up, he is denounced as a liar — because absence of proof is, conveniently ("smoothly" you would say), is changed into proof of absence. For example:
Donald Trump Uses Twitter to Flat Out Lie About “Millions” of Illegal Votes in Election. See? No evidence, means it was not true — and he knew it to be untrue (otherwise it wouldn't be a "lie"): Trump never cites any sources and his campaign wouldn’t go into details about the claims but the information the president-elect is citing appears to have originated with the website InfoWars, which often pushes fringe far-right conspiracy theories. The story that claimed there were 3 million illegal votes was based on a couple of tweets that someone sent with absolutely no evidence. Why Does Donald Trump Lie About Voter Fraud? — same thing, a statement not backed up by irrefutable evidence is a lie. Not a mistake, not a hyperbole, a lie: There is not a scintilla of evidence for this claim, and Mr. Trump’s own lawyers have admitted as muchSo, if Trump's statements are lies unless proven (#PresumptionOfGuilt), how could he possibly prove having obtain consent from those women years ago? Only by getting it in writing... Which he failed to do and is, by the special rules created for Republican politicians, guilty.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
What bunch of small d assholes.
They're coming for Jew Goldstein.
To all the sociopaths here trying to excuse the sender's behavior, what you are trying to excuse here is literally attempted murder.
Grand mal seizures Carey a non-negligible risk of death. The tweeter sent the blinking lights to Eichenwald knowing that he had epilepsy and intending to trigger a grand mal seizure. Whether he opened it or not is immaterial. Just as if I heard that someone was trying to kill me and stayed away from my home, then he showed up and riddled my house with bullets hoping to kill me, he'd still be charged with attempted murder, since he acted intending to harm me in a way likely to lead to my death.
I don't care what your political stripe is, this is criminal behavior, just as it would be if it targeted Bill O'Reilly or Alex Jones.
The guy who perpetrated this belongs in federal prison where he can learn what fearing for his life every day is all about. And the psychos here defending him deserve the same.
" Eichenwald's aggressive coverage of President-elect Trump"
This won't go anywhere once the FBI discovers it was Russia again.
You are one person, and your anecdote is no more valid than my anecdote, regardless of whether it involved you, or the guardian I grew up with. Sit down and shut the fuck up? that's your answer to your lame-ass broken argument from authority? You're right. Rarity of his claim precludes honesty of it. Thanks for helping me with my logic. The world needs more people like you.
It's an action against a leftist, and hence not a crime.
Similarly, have you noticed that "law and order" types are all about the order, and are eager to disregard the law when it gets inconvenient, like when it provides rights to the accused?
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
It looks like your epilepsy isn't the only brain problem you have. Clearly stupidity is also present.
Many things can trigger epileptic seizures, including flashing lights, or even looking at a fan's blades when they're moving. Just because you aren't affected that way doesn't mean nobody is.
Educate yourself or at least have the common decency to STFU.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.