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I'd also love a feature that lets me block non-advertising political content. A lot of people like to use Facebook as a political soapbox. That's not what I wa

I'd also love a feature that lets me block non-advertising political content. A lot of people like to use Facebook as a political soapbox. That's not what I want out of it. I want to stay connected to people, hear updates, socialize, etc. Some people push it so far that the solution of unfriending them is easy. But not everybody is so egregious that I want the nuclear option. (For example, relatives who are vocal about politics.) Text classification is a thing, and there are many other techniques, so it seems possible to recognize political content with some reasonable level of accuracy and show me a lot less of that. Maybe this would even go beyond making my own feed better. If enough people feel the same, maybe it would cut down on the audience size and reduce people's temptation to get on a soapbox.

bananamerica 6y ago
Social Fixer is a browser extension that provides filters for Facebook. I used it during elections period and it’s great. My current solution is to not use Facebook at all, and I got say it’s pretty neat :P
ericsoderstrom 6y ago
You can use an ad blocker to filter out html elements that contain keywords or hashtags that are often used in the types of posts you don't want to see. Not a perfect solution, but an ok solution.
kgin 6y ago
Absolutely, I want to know what people I care about are up to. I don't want my entire social world to turn into hot takes. There are important issues, absolutely. But my personal relationships with other humans are not based on their hot takes on those issues.
yosito 6y ago
I wholeheartedly agree with you. I've been thinking so often lately, that I'd really just like to know what's happening in my loved ones' lives, and not see everyone airing their amateur political opinions. But I think the reality is that these sorts of things are often a gray area. For example, I don't want to hear everyone's opinion about the riots in America. But my sister lives in Minneapolis and the building next to her house was burned down. I want to know about that. And while generally I don't want to hear heated debates about laws and court decisions, I've got LGBTQ family members and when SCOTUS makes decisions affecting their lives, I want to know about it. But what I do and don't want to know about is not an easy thing to filter. Even my closest friends probably wouldn't be able to accurately filter what I do and don't want to know about. I highly doubt that an algorithm tuned to optimize engagement and profit is really going to be able to accurately filter what I want to know about either. I've resorted to muting anyone who posts anything about politics, and doing things the old fashioned way and calling people to hear what's new in their lives.
mmanfrin 6y ago
What is political content? Is news about the protests political? Is a statement by the president? Is a new law going in to effect political? Is someone commenting about wearing masks political? > Text classification is a thing, and there are many other techniques, so it seems possible to recognize political content with some reasonable level of accuracy and show me a lot less of that. I think you severely underestimate what constitutes classifying something as political.
- lallysingh 6y ago
  Perhaps put a list of check boxes for political topics and let people choose. Labeling topics by activity in news sources (say, in combination with other known political terms or authors) can help discover the list mechanically.
- ogre_codes 6y ago
  > I think you severely underestimate what constitutes classifying something as political. You are over-thinking this. Just filtering obvious political stuff would be a massive help: - Mentions of politicians - Key words: Liberal, Conservative, Right-wing, etc etc - Material re-shared from political parties/ candidates/ movements. Just that would be a giant help. Allowing users to set their own filters would be a massive help. None of this makes Facebook money though so it won't happen.
  - 8ytecoder 6y ago
    Pretty much everything is politics these days. That's the unfortunate truth. We can't even distinguish personal and non-personal that easily any more. Even filtering by status updates and photos won't help. Status updates can be political speech (may or may not call out someone by name or ideology), photos could be your friend holding a placard or a meme. Things as simple as wearing/not-wearing a mask is political now. In an alternate world, that would be classified under health. At least for me, that's upsetting that we are debating this. And it doesn't end there - how many of us have felt a tinge of jealousy when a friend posts that beautiful picture of a barn in the middle of Montana while you're slugging away on your computer? That's not healthy either. I have come to peace that I'll text my friends directly and that's it. Once a month or so I log on to facebook and comment on personal updates. Instagram & Reddit is what I can't quit yet. Sometimes I do need that mind numbing feed scrolling time. Otherwise, I actually call/text and talk to friends and family. Granted who I call family and friends is very limited. TBC, these are my personal opinions and how you view and use social media could be different. It's clearly not for me anymore.
r00fus 6y ago
Maybe the best move is simply to not play the game. FB is clearly focusing on their customers, the ad-buyers and influencers.
cwperkins 6y ago
I would pay money for a feature like this
rattray 6y ago
Anecdotally, I was able to achieve this by _never_ interacting with political content on FB. That, or nobody in my network posts it (unlikely). But I never see political posts on my newsfeed.
ogre_codes 6y ago
> I'd also love a feature that lets me block non-advertising political content. I would just prefer an option where I only saw content my friends actually took the time to post themselves. I don't want politics, memes, or other trendy bullshit, just their words, pictures, or even links they personally took the time to clip and paste. If I want news or entertainment, I can find that myself, but Facebook is currently the single best place for me to connect to a bunch of my friends and I'd love to see that without all the other bullshit. Of course that's not what makes FB money so it'll never happen, which is why I just stopped using it entirely. (Well that plus the fact that it's run by a bunch of sociopaths)
- pezezin 6y ago
  I totally agree with you. I think what's killing Facebook are the endless reposts, just show me original content, please. I was working on a script to hide shared posts, but it broke after the last update. Maybe I need to fix it and publish it as a browser extension?
  - ogre_codes 6y ago
    > Maybe I need to fix it and publish it as a browser extension? This sounds way to time consuming to me for way too little reward.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
catalogia 6y ago
A simple naive bayesian text classifier (e.g. A Plan for Spam) run client-side as a userscript should be more than capable of doing what you want. It would be nice if websites had this sort of client-side filtering feature built in, fully controlled by the user, for transparency reasons.
tanilama 6y ago
What is political itself is political. Is LGBT political? Is support for immigration political. Is climate change political? Is COVID-19 political? Trying to be impartial here is a fool's game.
- koheripbal 6y ago
  Believe it or not, there are times in my life where I'm not interested in hearing more about LGBT rights, immigration, covid-19, or climate change.
grappler 6y ago
My approach has been to make a “politics” friend list, and put people on it when they post political things. Then I share political stuff with that list. So if I haven't seen political stuff from you, you shouldn't see it from me. For people who just share too much, besides the nuclear option or unfriending or unfollowing, I like the 30 day mute.

bananamerica 6y ago

Social Fixer is a browser extension that provides filters for Facebook. I used it during elections period and it’s great. My current solution is to not use Facebook at all, and I got say it’s pretty neat :P

ericsoderstrom 6y ago

You can use an ad blocker to filter out html elements that contain keywords or hashtags that are often used in the types of posts you don't want to see. Not a perfect solution, but an ok solution.

kgin 6y ago

Absolutely, I want to know what people I care about are up to. I don't want my entire social world to turn into hot takes. There are important issues, absolutely. But my personal relationships with other humans are not based on their hot takes on those issues.

yosito 6y ago

I wholeheartedly agree with you. I've been thinking so often lately, that I'd really just like to know what's happening in my loved ones' lives, and not see everyone airing their amateur political opinions. But I think the reality is that these sorts of things are often a gray area. For example, I don't want to hear everyone's opinion about the riots in America. But my sister lives in Minneapolis and the building next to her house was burned down. I want to know about that. And while generally I don't want to hear heated debates about laws and court decisions, I've got LGBTQ family members and when SCOTUS makes decisions affecting their lives, I want to know about it. But what I do and don't want to know about is not an easy thing to filter. Even my closest friends probably wouldn't be able to accurately filter what I do and don't want to know about. I highly doubt that an algorithm tuned to optimize engagement and profit is really going to be able to accurately filter what I want to know about either. I've resorted to muting anyone who posts anything about politics, and doing things the old fashioned way and calling people to hear what's new in their lives.

mmanfrin 6y ago

What is political content? Is news about the protests political? Is a statement by the president? Is a new law going in to effect political? Is someone commenting about wearing masks political? > Text classification is a thing, and there are many other techniques, so it seems possible to recognize political content with some reasonable level of accuracy and show me a lot less of that. I think you severely underestimate what constitutes classifying something as political.

lallysingh 6y ago
Perhaps put a list of check boxes for political topics and let people choose. Labeling topics by activity in news sources (say, in combination with other known political terms or authors) can help discover the list mechanically.
ogre_codes 6y ago
> I think you severely underestimate what constitutes classifying something as political. You are over-thinking this. Just filtering obvious political stuff would be a massive help: - Mentions of politicians - Key words: Liberal, Conservative, Right-wing, etc etc - Material re-shared from political parties/ candidates/ movements. Just that would be a giant help. Allowing users to set their own filters would be a massive help. None of this makes Facebook money though so it won't happen.
- 8ytecoder 6y ago
  Pretty much everything is politics these days. That's the unfortunate truth. We can't even distinguish personal and non-personal that easily any more. Even filtering by status updates and photos won't help. Status updates can be political speech (may or may not call out someone by name or ideology), photos could be your friend holding a placard or a meme. Things as simple as wearing/not-wearing a mask is political now. In an alternate world, that would be classified under health. At least for me, that's upsetting that we are debating this. And it doesn't end there - how many of us have felt a tinge of jealousy when a friend posts that beautiful picture of a barn in the middle of Montana while you're slugging away on your computer? That's not healthy either. I have come to peace that I'll text my friends directly and that's it. Once a month or so I log on to facebook and comment on personal updates. Instagram & Reddit is what I can't quit yet. Sometimes I do need that mind numbing feed scrolling time. Otherwise, I actually call/text and talk to friends and family. Granted who I call family and friends is very limited. TBC, these are my personal opinions and how you view and use social media could be different. It's clearly not for me anymore.

r00fus 6y ago

Maybe the best move is simply to not play the game. FB is clearly focusing on their customers, the ad-buyers and influencers.

cwperkins 6y ago

I would pay money for a feature like this

rattray 6y ago

Anecdotally, I was able to achieve this by _never_ interacting with political content on FB. That, or nobody in my network posts it (unlikely). But I never see political posts on my newsfeed.

ogre_codes 6y ago

> I'd also love a feature that lets me block non-advertising political content. I would just prefer an option where I only saw content my friends actually took the time to post themselves. I don't want politics, memes, or other trendy bullshit, just their words, pictures, or even links they personally took the time to clip and paste. If I want news or entertainment, I can find that myself, but Facebook is currently the single best place for me to connect to a bunch of my friends and I'd love to see that without all the other bullshit. Of course that's not what makes FB money so it'll never happen, which is why I just stopped using it entirely. (Well that plus the fact that it's run by a bunch of sociopaths)

pezezin 6y ago
I totally agree with you. I think what's killing Facebook are the endless reposts, just show me original content, please. I was working on a script to hide shared posts, but it broke after the last update. Maybe I need to fix it and publish it as a browser extension?
- ogre_codes 6y ago
  > Maybe I need to fix it and publish it as a browser extension? This sounds way to time consuming to me for way too little reward.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

catalogia 6y ago

A simple naive bayesian text classifier (e.g. A Plan for Spam) run client-side as a userscript should be more than capable of doing what you want. It would be nice if websites had this sort of client-side filtering feature built in, fully controlled by the user, for transparency reasons.

tanilama 6y ago

What is political itself is political. Is LGBT political? Is support for immigration political. Is climate change political? Is COVID-19 political? Trying to be impartial here is a fool's game.

koheripbal 6y ago
Believe it or not, there are times in my life where I'm not interested in hearing more about LGBT rights, immigration, covid-19, or climate change.

grappler 6y ago

My approach has been to make a “politics” friend list, and put people on it when they post political things. Then I share political stuff with that list. So if I haven't seen political stuff from you, you shouldn't see it from me. For people who just share too much, besides the nuclear option or unfriending or unfollowing, I like the 30 day mute.