Scunthorpe Problem facts
While investigating facts about Scunthorpe Problem, I found out little known, but curios details like:
The "Scunthorpe Problem", where wordfilters will replace text strings containing obscene words with more SFW versions, changing "assassinate" to "buttbuttinate"
Residents of Scunthorpe, England, were unable to create AOL accounts in 1996 because the town's name contained a word that was flagged by AOL's profanity filter. The now common issue of innocent words being filtered for containing profanity is called the "Scunthorpe Problem."
In my opinion, it is useful to put together a list of the most interesting details from trusted sources that I've come across. Here are 6 of the best facts about Scunthorpe Problem I managed to collect.
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In an example of the Scunthorpe problem, a news site filtered an Associated Press article on sprinter Tyson Gay, replacing instances of "gay" with "homosexual", thus rendering his name as "Tyson Homosexual"
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The Scunthorpe Problem - Profanity blockers on sites having false positives due to certain sequences of letters within a name or phrase.
