How to Block Tech Rumors and Movie Spoilers Online
With reviews for Star Wars: The Force Awakens falling today and the movie airing Thursday night, it’s hard to avoid spoilers (or avoid the movie altogether for that matter). Here’s how to set up automatic blocking both globally and on specific websites so you don’t read any new spoilers or rumors.
This post was originally published in 2012. Due to the sheer amount of Star Wars content online, this week we updated our tips and tools to include options that still work.
If you don’t mind news sneaking here and there
Most of us have a limit on the number of spoilers (from OMG! Han Solo in the movie to OMG! Yoda is evil and now has horns) that we can handle on any particular topic. Luckily, you can hide this to make sure you don’t come across anything during normal browsing or on social media. Obviously, you also need to practice a little common sense – basically, don’t read articles about something and then complain about spoilers. Things will get messed up just by writing about it, so it’s probably best to avoid anything and everything on the Internet if that’s important to you.
Block keywords on social media
Blocking social media content is a great way to deliberately keep yourself in the dark about any topic of your choice. This is especially useful during sports games that you are not interested in, technology launches that mean nothing to you, or during your first weekend of games and movies. Here are some ways to block content without canceling your subscription or removing everyone from your friends.
- Twitter: Some Twitter apps like Tweetbot and Tweetdeck have a text filter hidden in the options bar . On Tweetbot, just tap the conversation bubble icon with an X in the middle, then Add Keyword and add the keywords you want to block. On the Tweetdeck, click Settings> Global Filter and add the text you want to filter.
- Facebook: If you have friends who don’t seem to stop talking about wars in space, you can set filters to remove that content from your news feed. Social Fixer is an extension for Chrome and Firefox that lets you customize content filters for status updates. You can block movie spoilers, overly political messages, or whatever you want.
Automatically hide comments on sites known for spoilers
One of the most annoying ways to ruin a movie, book, or video game is with a commentator who drops a huge spoiler out of nowhere. This is especially true if you’re just trying to watch a movie trailer or video game review. Fortunately, it’s pretty easy to block those comments and proceed without spoilers. Here’s how to do it.
- Block YouTube Comments: YouTube is a trove of spoilers and can’t be avoided if upvoted . Blocking them can not only save your sanity, but also save you from spoilers. No YouTube comments for Chrome and YouTube comments Snob for Firefox will hide comments so you don’t have to worry about accidentally learning the end of the movie. As far as YouTube is concerned, Adblock Plus can also block comments and other annoyances that could lead to spoilers.
- Block comments on many blogs: If you want to block comments completely, it’s pretty simple. Shut Up blocks a wide variety of blog comments and can help you avoid accidentally stumbling across unwanted information. Works even on iOS .
If you want to completely block all spoilers and rumors
If you choose the more extreme or long-term method, you need to adjust your viewing in such a way that any type of content can be avoided. This means customizing and filtering your RSS feed and using extensions to block keywords from whatever site you visit.
Customize RSS Filters
Feedly doesn’t have a built-in way to filter content from your feeds without completely unsubscribing from news sources. You will need to set up your channels through another source. Feed Rinse lets you add your current RSS feeds, customize filters, and then outputs a new, filtered RSS feed, stripping anything you don’t want to the selected reader .
Use extensions to completely block any mention of content
If you really want to get rid of certain news or spoilers, it’s time to block words from all over the web. This should only be used as a last resort, but if you really want to stay in the dark, this is the only way to do it.
- Block sites with content- specific extensions: Content – blocking extensions are very easy to create, so they exist for all sorts of specifics. For example, the Force Block extension blocks any site that even remotely mentions Star Wars. This is a pretty nuclear option as it blocks the entire site, including this one, as well as the likes of YouTube. There are all kinds of these extensions, including for the Kardashians , Donald Trump, and many more .
- Block websites based on keywords: The TinyFilter Chrome extension and the ProCon Firefox add – on let you create keyword blacklists. This means that when you try to visit a site with a keyword (say, “The Force Awakens”), your browser will block you. They are designed to block adult content and profanity, but if you really want to avoid certain types of news, this is a surefire way to do it.
- Treat your keyword as profanity: if you do not want to completely block the Internet but prefer not to see the terms contemplated, set up a filter profanity, such as a simple filter profanity for Chrome or a custom script filter profanity. It won’t block the internet, but it will turn every word “Star Wars,” “Trump,” or whatever keyword you choose, into a series of asterisks, which is pretty funny at least.
Except for a complete shutdown, you can never completely get rid of rumors and spoilers, but you can at least restrict your web content to a manageable level. There will be an abundance of Star Wars nonsense in the coming weeks, so if you want to get rid of it this is a great way to do it.