Twitter has pulled two online advertisements after receiving complaints from an epilepsy group.
The six-second ads promoting the social media giant's #DiscoverMusic Campaign -- an effort to promote new artists on the app -- were posted via Vine and featured a "looping, rapid succession of flashing colors," BBC News reported.
"Twitter's ads were dangerous to people living with photosensitive epilepsy," Epilepsy Action's deputy chief executive Simon Wigglesworth told BBC News.
Wigglesworth's epilepsy charity posted a tweet saying Twitter's Vine ads are "massively dangerous to people with photosensitive epilepsy." Twitter told BBC News it removed the ads Friday morning, hours after Epilepsy Action posted their complaint.
.@TwitterUK Your #DiscoverMusic Vines are massively dangerous to people with photosensitive epilepsy. Please take them offline now.
— Epilepsy Action (@epilepsyaction) July 10, 2015
@epilepsyaction @TwitterUK Hello, we appreciate your feedback, thank you. We have deleted them. — Rachel Bremer (@ryb) July 10, 2015
"Marketing communications should not include visual effects or techniques that are likely to adversely affect members of the public with photosensitive epilepsy," Advertising Standards Authority told the BBC News.
According to Time, 65 million people are diagnosed with epilepsy worldwide. This coupled with Twitter's extensive online presence makes the ads "a potentially serious problem." Flashing colors is a commonly reported trigger of epileptic seizures, according to Epilepsy Action.
"Eighty seven people are diagnosed with epilepsy every day and that first seizure can often come out of nowhere," Wigglesworth said. "For a huge corporation like Twitter to take that risk was irresponsible."
According to Time, Twitter's Vine ads ran for 18 hours before they were taken down.
