From Wikinews, the free news source you can write!
Monday, October 2, 2023
On Monday, a long-standing injustice involving wrongful censoring on YouTube has FINALLY been corrected: the word “condominium” is no longer blocked on YouTube’s search autocomplete tool. Previously, this word got blocked due to the coincidental inclusion of the substring “condom,” which has the same spelling as the first half of the word. To protect users from seeing objectionable content, many sex-related words, such as “condom” were blacklisted. Certain WWII-related words, such as the name “Hitler,” are banned, too. Unfortunately, since “condom” was blocked, suggestions go blank as soon as you type the “M,” preventing suggestions for the seemingly innocent word “condominium” from appearing as well. The Scunthorpe problem refers to the accidental blocking of innocent or unrelated words that contain forbidden substrings of characters. While computers can easily and quickly detect character sequences within inputs, broad blocking rules can result in false positives, resulting in innocent words, beyond the regular expressions’ intended targets, being blocked as well.
For years, you would get no suggestions if you typed “condominium” into the YouTube search bar. Type “condominium” today, and you will get plenty of suggestions such as “condominium movie” and “condominium interior design.”
Justin Joy, a 27-year-old boy in Massachusetts, loves the word “condominium,” so today, he is quite happy and relieved to see that this long-term injustice has finally been fixed.
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