Scunthorpe problem

The Scunthorpe problem is the unintentional blocking of online content by a spam filter or search engine because their text contains a string (or substring) of letters that appear to have an obscene or otherwise unacceptable meaning.

The problem arises since computers can easily identify strings of text within a document, but interpreting words of this kind requires considerable ability to interpret a wide range of contexts, possibly across many cultures, which is an extremely difficult task.

The problem was named after an incident in April 1996 in which AOL's profanity filter prevented people in the English town of Scunthorpe from creating AOL accounts because the town's name contains the substring "cunt".

[1] In the early 2000s, Google's opt-in SafeSearch made the same error, with local services and businesses that included the town in their names or URLs among those mistakenly hidden from search results.

[2] The Scunthorpe problem is challenging to completely solve due to the difficulty of creating a filter capable of understanding words in context.