Oh, social media... That place where we can follow our favorite actors, comment on a live TV show, and stay up-to-date on the latest news. But where, when you least expect it...Boom! You swallow a spoiler that spoils the last episode of your favorite series or the result of that game you were waiting to get home to watch.
Dear cursed, dear cursed, today we bring you the solution to forget about the dreaded spoilers when you enter social networks: silence words and hashtags.
Beyond the more playful aspect, this not only serves to avoid spoiling the ending of a movie. It is also useful for not finding topics on social networks that do not interest us or that we are not comfortable with. Mind you, we are not talking about creating our own bubble filter, but we can control a little bit what social networks throw at us in our feed and what they suggest to us is that, as we have already told in Maldita.es, is subject to its personalized recommendation algorithms, of which we don't know much.
The place par excellence of spoiler is Twitter. In the case of this social network, the app itself gives you the option to mute words and terms. In the app's side menu (under the three dots "More options"), select Settings and support. Settings and privacy, and then Privacy and security. (The tour in the app of the mobile, both Android and Apple, is the same).
Once in that menu, there is the option Silenced words with a submenu where you can choose different options: which word, phrase, user, emoji or hashtag you want to mute, whose (any person or people you don't follow) and the duration that the silencing will last.
For example, maybe there's a sporting event coming up, like the Olympic Games, and you're not interested in that information or don't want to see the results until you can experience the competition yourself. You could mute that term, the official accounts, and the hashtags #OlympicGames, #JuegosOlimpicos, and #Paris2024 for a month.
According to Twitter, the option to mute words and hashtags only applies to notifications and the start timeline; tweets will still be visible in searches. As for notifications of muted words and hashtags, apply to replies and mentions, including all interactions on those replies and mentions: Likes, Retweets, additional replies, and Quote Tweets. Twitter also details other tips to keep in mind when deciding on words, such as case insensitive or that if a word is silenced, the word itself and its meaning will be hidden. hashtag.
There's an even faster way to do this on the Twitter iPhone app. You can directly select a word in a tweet (the term you want to mute) and a menu will open where you can choose the option mute, as we show you in the following screenshot.
On the social network Instagram Terms can also be muted so they don't appear in posts. The app includes the ability to avoid offensive words and phrases by default. From Instagram they explain that “content that does not violate our Community Standards, but may be inappropriate, disrespectful, or offensive (for example, racial slurs, profanity, or fraud), can be hidden using the “Filtered Words” setting.
In addition, you can create a custom word list. To do this, once you open the application, you must go to the Settings menu, Privacy and Filtered words. In the Custom Words and Phrases section, you can choose Manage custom words and phrases, and there add words separated by commas.
Do comments or messages you've already seen on the platform disappear immediately? According to Instagram, when you hide comments or message requests, "“both new and existing content is hidden”If you later disable this option in your settings, any hidden message requests or comments will be restored, and you'll be able to see them again. Here you can find more details.
There may also be a topic we want to research in Google, but there's something related that we don't want to find in our search. For example, you need information about an actress but haven't been able to see her latest film yet. Google says that you can exclude words in your results by using symbols and punctuation marks.
According to Google, theoretically if you use the minus sign (-) before a word or words in quotation marks, will omit from the search web pages that contain itFor example, you want to search for information about Carrie-Anne Moss (Trinity in the saga of Matrix), but you haven't seen The Matrix ResurrectionsYou could do a search like this: Carrie-Anne Moss – “The Matrix Resurrections.” It should also help you find restaurants but avoid certain types of food, hotels in a city but avoid one you know isn't right for you, or go shopping. on-line without seeing a brand you don't like.
Spoiler courtesy of Maldita.es: not workingGoogle keeps showing you related results. According to comments from internet users on Google's own video, it used to work better; now, it only works occasionally, and it doesn't if the result you're trying to exclude is very popular.
If you want to look for other ways to avoid spoilers and terms that do not interest us while browsing the Internet, another option is plugins or extensions as Spoiler Protection 2.0 either CustomBlocker. Remember that before installing them you must check that are safe (and Here are some recommendations if you accidentally download a malicious one).
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