I mean we're approaching a point where the lines between physical and not are being blurred
Is this sharing the same principles as an attack with a weapon? We just don't know.
What we do know: This is a terrifying time to be alive.
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I don't think censor ship is needed, just sensibility.
It was suggested above that if this does go legal and courtwise the best and appropriate outcome would be stopping the auto play of gifs and videos where upon if you do play them and something bad happens the onus is on the person who clicked play rather than their person sending the thing.
Unfortunately common sense as you said is sorely lacking these days. So likely if it goes to court there will be charges filed, punishments given, laws drawn up and aweful stupid changes to basic internet freedoms. Not a good outcome but all we can hope for is the best.
It is difficult to lay blame accurately on this one. The sender was trying harm the jurno it seems, but the jurno should cop on and not be a fucking idiot with his own known health issues with regards to using a PC every day otherwise known as his job. Twitter should be more or less clear here though it might hopefully stop autoplaying everything, where upon phone and internet companies will have to come up with new ways to destroy data caps. Not more being forced into watching thing that will eat up those GBs.
So this is shitty, but also pretty interesting. But as much as there should be a sensible solution and it has been hit upon here, I will likely end up bad for everyone.
I wonder if other trolls will turn i6n the original troll in this case and put him on blast for making everything a little worse.
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I guess the next step is remotely take over someone's vehicle and display seizure inducing patterns through the entertainment / satnav system. This was the stuff of movies a few years ago, but recently completely plausible! Situations exist there is could lead to death. Although in this case, it's probably just an embarrassing episode for the victim.
Where do you draw the line? You'd have to ignore the medium used, and treat it as physical assault of the appropriate degree, like sneaking peanuts into food of someone who is allergic.
This brings up another issue of jurisdiction if it originated from another country, who doesn't really care.
This could be an analogy for the future where everyone has cyber implants in their heads, where hacking or interference could cause real problems.
I guess the issue that I am having, is seeing how absolutely trollish many in the media industry have become over the recent election results. Vanity Fair included. Sometimes it takes two (or more) to troll. I'm still interested in seeing the full conversational exchange, because I just have this nagging feeling the Vanity Fair journalist may have been doing some significant trolling of his own. I see from just a short perusal of his Twitter feed that he calls Trump supporters "deplorables," so, I suspect he might be considered by some to be a troll himself, only with a "legitimate troll" label by his name, because he's employed by a mainstream media outlet.
Not to say that the idiot who sent the photo-sensitive tweet didn't cross a serious line, but, if the journalist was dancing around the troll fire himself, getting burned by a more vicious troll is perhaps somewhat of an inherent risk?
Troll issues aside, what still needs to be addressed by Twitter, Fb and other websites, is disabling auto-play GIFs and videos by default, since that will solve this particular problem immediately. However, since these major social-media and portal sites receive a lot of revenue from auto-play ads, they probably won't touch the issue with a ten-foot pole. I am actually surprised that the lawyer hasn't added Twitter (yet) as a culpable defendant in this case, since they allowed the animated image to be served without warning. But, I guess the legal case is still being formed, so that may also be a possibility. If a lawsuit is filed, it may be a good thing, if it will force sites to knock off those damnable auto-play videos. :-)