Twitter has responded to an epilepsy charity that said two of its online adverts were “irresponsible”.<\/p>\n
The social media giant had uploaded two short videos on Vine that featured a looping, rapid succession of flashing colours.<\/p>\n
“Twitter’s ads were dangerous to people living with photo-sensitive epilepsy,” said Epilepsy Action’s deputy chief executive, Simon Wigglesworth.<\/p>\n
Twitter told the BBC it had removed the videos on Friday morning.<\/p>\n
Around one in 3,500 people in the UK has photosensitive epilepsy, according to Epilepsy Action. Seizures can be triggered by flashing lights and bold patterns.<\/p>\n
An episode of Japanese cartoon Pokemon was famously blamed for triggering convulsions in 1997.<\/p>\n
‘Irresponsible’<\/p>\n
“Eighty seven people are diagnosed with epilepsy every day and that first seizure can often come out of nowhere,” said Mr Wigglesworth.<\/p>\n
“For a huge corporation like Twitter to take that risk was irresponsible.”<\/p>\n
The Advertising Standards Authority told the BBC that “marketing communications”, even those uploaded on a company’s own website, should not include “visual effects or techniques that are likely to adversely affect members of the public with photosensitive epilepsy”.<\/p>\n
It said both online and broadcast adverts in the UK had to adhere to rules made by the Committees of Advertising Practice.<\/p>\n
“We take very seriously ads in online media that might cause harm to people with photosensitive epilepsy,” an ASA spokeswoman told the BBC.<\/p>\n
Twitter’s flashing Vine videos were online for 18 hours before the company removed them.<\/p>\n
Epilepsy Action said it was “pleased” that Twitter had replied to its messages and removed the posts.<\/p>\n
Rachel Bremer, Twitter’s international communications director, thanked the charity for highlighting the issue.<\/p>\n
“We appreciate your feedback,” she said on Twitter.<\/p>\n
–<\/p>\n
Source: BBC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Twitter has responded to an epilepsy charity that said two of its online adverts were “irresponsible”. The social media giant had uploaded two short videos on Vine that featured a looping, rapid succession of flashing colours. “Twitter’s ads were dangerous to people living with photo-sensitive epilepsy,” said Epilepsy Action’s deputy chief executive, Simon Wigglesworth. Twitter […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":133412,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[18],"class_list":["post-133407","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-dr-akwasi-osei"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133407","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=133407"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133407\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/133412"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=133407"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=133407"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=133407"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}