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Comment by sauronlord | Hacker News Reader

What's next?

Sending pictures of hamburgers, porn, candy and alcohol will be illegal because it can cause people to become obese, suffer stroke, and disease, and an erection.

In other news, the proprietors of hundreds of optical illusion sites have had their homes raided and being kept in prison cells for inciting physical distress on the public.

Soon there will be takedown requests to remove search results for sites that discuss optical illusions or link to sites that link to sites that -may- cause some physical distress

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Nah, what's next is that you will see a friend of yours die because of their allergies to a product that wasn't indicated on the package. Will you spit on the grave, or will you realize that you aren't alone in this world and your apparent absence of triggers doesn't prevent you from being a shithead?

Cheers, and happy St. Patrick.

Nice ad-hominem.

This is a philosophical debate and we are on a very interesting line that is worthy of passionate discussion.

It is not as clear cut as many people say.

We aggressively advertise harmful substances to people, KNOWING full well that MILLIONS of people will be imprinted at a young age and result in disastrous consequences for their health (Seizures! And more).

Giving kids sugar at a young age and making them addicted to sugary cereals with "prizes" in the box should result in a much greater pumishment than what these chumps did.

I know they are on a different scale. But your reaction is a pre-reflective one and likely due to the novelty of this "assault".

We will see if these writings are vindicated or not based on a guilty/not-guilty. Then we can read the Judge's PDF and see what philosophical consideratioms were at play.

> We aggressively advertise harmful substances to people, KNOWING full well that MILLIONS of people will be imprinted at a young age and result in disastrous consequences for their health (Seizures! And more).

You are stating here that "we" are aggressively advertising harmful substances to people that will cause them to have seizures?

>Nice ad-hominem.

Poor snowflake. You're so special people can't call you out when you're throwing up shit on a website.

Your reply right there was pure ad hominem :-)

Let's remove the internet from the equation. So you have a grudge with someone, you know they have epilepsy, so you assault them to trigger one. Is this a crime? Most likely, I know if I had epilepsy I would hope so (and judging from this article I think it is) So why is it ridiculous for assaulting someone on Twitter specifically to trigger a seizure some how ridiculous that it's a crime?

Because then we can't treat the Internet like the wild west and do a bunch of stuff that the law would have prevented us from doing before... /s

This was done on purpose - the individual specifically said he was doing it to cause a seizure. It's not comparable to hypotheticals you described.

Oh, so Big Food, Pharma, Alcohol are not intentionally making you crave the shitty addictive foods that we know cause those symptoms?

That has nothing, and I mean nothing to do with the article, or any discussion regarding it. Why do you keep bringing up that non sequitur?

In other news, false equivalences lead to bad conclusions. The same action can be beneficent in some contexts, malicious in others, and even neutral in still others — think a surgeon cutting someone vs. an assassin cutting someone vs. somebody handing you a document that gives you a papercut. Treating all these cases as though they're equivalent would be ridiculous and not at all useful.

> More than 40 ppl sent strobes once they found out they could trigger seizures.

I'd like to see you explain how that isn't an intentional attempt to physically harm the journalist in question.

There are dozens of things that fall under the same legal category, such as pranks (often harmless unless they go wrong) that end up physically harming someone, that will properly get you in serious trouble.

That's actually one of the sad things about the internet, it can instantly bring out the worst in people. I suspect if people know seizures can result in death fewer would have done it, but there would still have been people doing it. I wouldn't mind if they arrested all 40, gave them a day in jail so they could think about their actions, and also let the world know there are consequences for it.

Yes, because guilty until proven innocent is the best way to teach them a lesson!

It's a shame you are not a lawyer or a judge.

Arrests occur previous to judges being involved and determinations of guilt.

Your sarcastic and aggressive tone in this thread isn't helping you get your point across.

> Arrests occur previous to judges being involved and determinations of guilt.

Well, quite often after judges are involved, but before determinations of guilt. Arrest warrants are, after all, a thing.

Thanks, I phrased that poorly.

Probably one of my favorite black mirror episodes involves exploring the consequences of anonymity on the internet and the (deadly) consequences. Worth seeing that one I think, because after I watched, I wasn't sure if I'd be one to join in the fray in the crowd, and the only thing stopping me is the idea that I might be caught and punished, and so what does that say about me?

No, it's like you being deathly allergic to shellfish, and me coating your glass with shrimp extract. It's a clear attempt to harm without any concern for potentially injurious or fatal outcomes.

That's poisoning someone.

Showing an image designed to induce a seizure in someone with a neurological disorder is not unlike poisoning.

It's so refreshing to finally be on the same page.

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