Twitter recently added bright flashes to two short videos it posted through Vine's video sharing service. However, a British epilepsy support group then complained through a tweet that the flickers would cause epileptic seizures among people with photosensitivity, and requested the social media company to take down the video.
The social network complied. Within one hour afterwards, a Twitter representative announced that it had pulled the #DiscoverMusic Vines videos, according to Los Angeles Times. They had been online for 18 hours.
Epilepsy Action is a charity organization. Its deputy chief executive Simon Wigglesworth told the BBC that an epilepsy patient's first seizure often comes from out of the blue, and referred to Twitter's posting of the clips as "irresponsible."
Joseph Sirven is editor-in-chief of the Epilepsy Foundation's website. He pointed out that the recent incident is part of a long history of video industries figuring out how to keep content safe, such as through warnings about flashing content.
Sirven said the history included TVs, computers, video games, and cellphones, respectively. Today's hot issues are about how to safely broadcast videos on a smart phone or tablet.
The Epilepsy Foundation reports that around 3 percent of all patients can have seizures after being exposed to fast-changing visual patterns. Examples are flashing lights and light-dark patterns, according to My Central Oregon.
Twitter's videos were created on a video app Vine and promoted the #DiscoverMusic campaign. It included a loop of quick-changing colors.
This is not the first time Epilepsy Action has voiced concerns about flickering videos. People claimed in 2012 that they had seizures when watching an Olympics TV promo that included a color-rippled logo.
In a related incident, a 1997 episode of Pokemon, an animated Japanese TV show, reportedly caused hundreds of watchers to suffer epileptic seizures. That was due to bright red strobe lights.