Twitter bans animated PNGs to prevent trolls from weaponizing them and triggering seizures

Twitter has banned animated PNG image files (APNGs) on the platform in a bid to prevent the file format being weaponized against people with epilepsy, following a series of troll attacks on the platform.

The company announced the changes, indicating that it had detected a bug which allowed users to bypass its autoplay protection settings and include multiple animated images in a single tweet, which could potentially trigger seizures in people with sensitivity to motion and flashing images.

The news follows reported attacks on Twitter in which trolls hijacked the Epilepsy Foundation’s twitter handle and hashtags used during National Epilepsy Awareness Month in the US in November. 

From now on, only GIFs (Graphics Interchange Format) will be animated on the platform, as they cannot circumvent the autoplay settings, though the company stated that existing tweets with APNGs (Animated Portable Network Graphics) won't be deleted. 

Trolls reportedly weaponized APNGs with strobing light effects, targeting the foundation’s roughly 33,300 followers in an estimated 30 separate attacks. It is unclear how many people were affected by the attacks but criminal complaints have been lodged against several accounts involved in them. 

Animated images can be considered as a deadly weapon, according to precedent set in Texas in 2016, when John Rayne Rivello was charged with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon for sending a flashing GIF to journalist Kurt Eichenwald, triggering an eight-minute-long epileptic seizure.

Epilepsy is a potentially life-threatening condition believed to affect more than 50 million people, according to the World Health Organisation; of this number, roughly three percent have photosensitive epilepsy.

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