In 1996, a Scunthorpe resident named David Blackie tried to set up an online account on AOL.
But as he clicked on the ‘sign-up’ button, his registration was blocked.
He contacted the helpline, who thought that because his surname was Blackie, the algorithms might have interpreted it as a racial slur and thus his registration was blocked.
Eventually, it was found out that since Scunthorpecontained the word cunt (an extremely offensive slang denoting female genitalia), the algorithm took it as obscene and unacceptable.
AOL got over the problem by asking its users to use the word Sconthorpe until the problem was resolved.
This unintentional blocking of websites, e-mails, forum posts, or search results by a spam filter or search engine is called the Scunthorpe Problem. So, when your legitimate email is blocked or redirected to the recipient’s spam folder because of a string of letters that the algorithm finds offensive, you know you have been Scunthorped.
In Artificial Intelligence, this is referred to as the ‘Unexpected Drawback’ i.e. where an unanticipated negative outcome happens in addition to the desired positive result.
