Content Moderation Case Study: Profanity Filter Causes Problems At Paleontology Conference (October 2020)
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20201228/15255245960/content-moderation-case-study-profanity-filter-causes-problems-paleontology-conference-october-2020.shtml
Summary: With the COVID pandemic still in full force, the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology moved its annual meeting online. The event was due to run for an entire week, but early issues caused attendees and moderators to question the contents of the pre-packaged content filter provided by Convey Services, which operated the virtual meeting software.
The effort to ensure followup Q&A sessions would be free of profanity and other disruptiveness went awry when terms commonly used by paleontologists got caught in the software's filter. While words like "pubic," "bone," or "hell" might be appropriately blocked elsewhere, the blocklisting of these words disrupted the conference the software was supposed to keep from being disrupted.