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Dominic Cummings has been dominating the news agenda all week, but you won’t find his name trending anywhere on Twitter.
The social network’s anti-porn filters have jumped in to block Mr. Cummings’ name from trending because, well, it sounds a bit naughty.
Don’t worry though, a variety of misspelled and inventive hashtags have come up to plug the gap.
Because #CumGate is totally okay.
Given the proliferation of smut on the service, Twitter developed advanced filters targeting words that are related to porn. But computers will always be computers so while they recognise a string of letters at lightning speed they can’t always pick up context.
In fact, the accidentally name blocking by a filter is such a common occurrence that it’s known by computer scientists as ‘the Scunthorpe problem.’
Turns out the Lincolnshire town has often been omitted from results because over-zealous filters think people are getting too close to the word ‘scum’.
Twitter doesn’t make public which words and phrases are included on the list, but a quick search for words like ‘porn’ and ‘Cummings’ blocks any and all video and photo results.
Other hashtags continued to rise because Twitter would helpfully suggest one of them – such as #dominiccummigs – if users try to type in the aide’s name.
We’ve had some classics this week, including #CumSack.
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