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Why Web Filters Don't Work: Penistone and the Scunthorpe Problem

Tom Scott · explainer · Watch on YouTube

Free speech, censorship & civil libertiesSoftware architecture & design

What it is

Tom Scott visits Penistone to explain the Scunthorpe problem, showing why naive web and profanity filters block innocent words.

Why Hacker News recommends it

The go-to explainer whenever content filters wrongly flag innocent words, well made and short.

  • 2 people recommended it
  • 2 different months
  • 0 strong recommendations
  • first 2017, last 2026

What HN commenters said

  1. “It's well done, like the rest of his content.”

    Tom Scott on why web filters fail

    colemannugent, 2017-04 · Recommendation · in “Scunthorpe Problem”

  2. “He talks about how it's impossible to implement with all edge-cases, easy to circumvent”

    Why profanity filtering has edge cases and is easy to circumvent

    thepete2, 2020-05 · Recommendation · in “Scunthorpe Sans – a self-censoring font”

Excerpts from Hacker News comments, linked to the originals. Summaries and labels were written by a language model from those comments.

Topics: scunthorpe problem, profanity filters, censorship, tom scott, moderation

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