[imagesource:here]

If you have even a passing interest in British politics, you’ll know that Dominic Cummings has had a rough week.

Boris Johnson’s chief adviser was found to have travelled across country from London to Durham, in clear breach of the lockdown rules and regulations the UK government had been promoting, and the backlash has been immense.

For those not familiar with the scandal, here’s a timeline that lays out just how ridiculous his excuses are. Those include a trip to popular tourist destination Barnard Castle, on his wife’s birthday, with his child in the car, because he needed to test his eyesight to see if he was fit to drive back to London.

Yes, he did that, and had some stunning reasons for why he was spotted walking around, and sitting by the riverside:

This Specsavers / Barnard Castle crossover meme has proven popular:

Cummings further dragged his name through the mud when he held a press conference defending his actions (that video above is from said presser), and refused to apologise to the British public, some of whom had to watch from a distance as family members died due to the government’s stay at home orders.

Still, despite all of this, Cummings’ name did not appear on Twitter’s list of trending topics, causing many to wonder if it was somehow being stifled.

The Guardian reports that the truth is something a little less sinister, and involves the platform’s anti-porn filters:

As a result of the filtering, trending topics over the past five days have instead included a variety of misspellings of his name, including #cummnings, #dominiccummigs and #sackcummimgs, as well as his first name on its own, the hashtag #sackdom, and the place names Durham, County Durham and Barnard Castle.

The filter also affects suggested hashtags, meaning users who tried to type  #dominiccummings were instead presented with one of the misspelled variations to auto-complete, helping them trend instead.

This sort of accidental filtering has gained a name in computer science: the Scunthorpe problem, so-called because of the Lincolnshire town’s regular issues with such censorship.

There’s a word in the middle of ‘Scunthorpe’ that you may recognise as naughty.

Twitter chose not to comment on the filtering, but it didn’t stop Brits from tearing into Cummings:

Unfortunately for Cummings, the regular revelations – and inventive misspellings – mean new trending topics have arrived each day, with Saturday’s #sackcummimgs giving way to Tuesday’s “Barnard Castle Eye Test” and Wednesday’s “Dim and Dom”.

It takes a great deal to make the British genuinely angry, but Cummings, and Boris Johnson with his defence of one of his top aides, have managed.

Take a look through what the British papers are saying and the anger is palpable.

[source:guardian]