Why Web Filters Don't Work: Penistone and the Scunthorpe Problem
Why Hacker News recommends it
The go-to explainer whenever content filters wrongly flag innocent words, well made and short.
What it is
Tom Scott visits Penistone to explain the Scunthorpe problem, showing why naive web and profanity filters block innocent words.
Recommended by 2 HN commenters across 2 different months, 2017 to 2026.
What Hacker News said
Recommends colemannugent · 2017-04 · on “Scunthorpe Problem”
Tom Scott did a video on this: Why Web Filters Don't Work: Penistone and the Scunthorpe Problem - [this video] It's well done, like the rest of his content.
Recommends thepete2 · 2020-05 · on “Scunthorpe Sans – a self-censoring font”
There is a video [0] about this censoring-"problem" by Youtuber Tom Scott. He talks about how it's impossible to implement with all edge-cases, easy to circumvent and thus usually not a good idea. Fittingly, the video is filmed in Peniston. [0] [this video]
Cites Crosseye_Jack · 2021-03 · on “Tweeting “Memphis” autolocks your Twitter account”
Penistone and Scunthorpe and now Memphis. [this video] As much as I dislike Twitter (I only really use it for work reasons) they are in a no win situation. They either moderate what people post with a flawed system that will never be 100% or be hounded by the "Why won't anyone think of the children" group.
Cites varun_ch · 2026-08 · on “Guiding Ships with Moire Patterns”
With Tom Scott in particular, there’s a number of his videos that are kinda eerie to watch now with today’s LLM context eg. [this video]