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I’m sure they could develop a classifier that would catch most (~90%) of political content, and make it opt-in - if people want to see it they can, but it could

I’m sure they could develop a classifier that would catch most (~90%) of political content, and make it opt-in - if people want to see it they can, but it could be hidden by default. This would be my preferred approach, so that I can use it for connecting with people but avoid listening to everyone’s political outrage.

londons_explore 6y ago
You could build this as a browser extension... Call it "de-politics", and have it scan the HTML of popular sites (facebook, twitter, etc) and simply collapse/hide all content matching some filter. I bet a simple keyword filter for names of politicians could catch 90%. I wonder if people would pay for it?
- davisr 6y ago
  Ah, of course, censoring political discussion is the answer!
  - gfodor 6y ago
    Censoring is when an authority removes content without your consent. Installing something that lets you decide what content to see (or not see) on a site is not censorship.
    - davisr 6y ago
      It is, however, sealing one's self in a chamber of like-minded opinion.
      - bmarquez 6y ago
        That implies Facebook posts are an accurate assessment of opinion, and not whatever the algorithms promoted to increase engagement.
- lozaning 6y ago
  If you take the time to set it up you can get close using https://www.fbpurity.com/ https://www.fbpurity.com/ chrome plugin.
gfodor 6y ago
You could def make this not suck by just making it so facebook automatically 'tagged' content and users can filter out certain tags. Since it'd be public, users could decide for themselves if the tags are reasonable for their filtering needs. But they'll never do it, because ad conversion rates and engagement would likely drop significantly.
ardy42 6y ago
> I’m sure they could develop a classifier that would catch most (~90%) of political content, and make it opt-in - if people want to see it they can, but it could be hidden by default. This would be my preferred approach, so that I can use it for connecting with people but avoid listening to everyone’s political outrage. Eh, I don't really like that idea. For one, it only really addresses the problem of being exposed to content you find unenjoyable. Honestly, sometimes I do wonder if consumer-level broadcast technology is the psychic equivalent of doing something like letting everyone fly planes without any training. It might be better to adopt communication technologies with a little more friction.
wnissen 6y ago
I spent the entire month of September 2016 flagging every single political post, whether it was a news article, friend's status, shared post, whatever, as "See less like this". It was completely ineffective. At the end of the month I was getting seeing just as much politics as before. So I'm not sure they can, or maybe want to. I was giving them all the input they needed to make a good classifier, and it was a lot of work. Maybe classifiers have improved enough in the previous four years.

londons_explore 6y ago

You could build this as a browser extension... Call it "de-politics", and have it scan the HTML of popular sites (facebook, twitter, etc) and simply collapse/hide all content matching some filter. I bet a simple keyword filter for names of politicians could catch 90%. I wonder if people would pay for it?

davisr 6y ago
Ah, of course, censoring political discussion is the answer!
- gfodor 6y ago
  Censoring is when an authority removes content without your consent. Installing something that lets you decide what content to see (or not see) on a site is not censorship.
  - davisr 6y ago
    It is, however, sealing one's self in a chamber of like-minded opinion.
    - bmarquez 6y ago
      That implies Facebook posts are an accurate assessment of opinion, and not whatever the algorithms promoted to increase engagement.
lozaning 6y ago
If you take the time to set it up you can get close using https://www.fbpurity.com/ https://www.fbpurity.com/ chrome plugin.

gfodor 6y ago

You could def make this not suck by just making it so facebook automatically 'tagged' content and users can filter out certain tags. Since it'd be public, users could decide for themselves if the tags are reasonable for their filtering needs. But they'll never do it, because ad conversion rates and engagement would likely drop significantly.

ardy42 6y ago

> I’m sure they could develop a classifier that would catch most (~90%) of political content, and make it opt-in - if people want to see it they can, but it could be hidden by default. This would be my preferred approach, so that I can use it for connecting with people but avoid listening to everyone’s political outrage. Eh, I don't really like that idea. For one, it only really addresses the problem of being exposed to content you find unenjoyable. Honestly, sometimes I do wonder if consumer-level broadcast technology is the psychic equivalent of doing something like letting everyone fly planes without any training. It might be better to adopt communication technologies with a little more friction.

wnissen 6y ago

I spent the entire month of September 2016 flagging every single political post, whether it was a news article, friend's status, shared post, whatever, as "See less like this". It was completely ineffective. At the end of the month I was getting seeing just as much politics as before. So I'm not sure they can, or maybe want to. I was giving them all the input they needed to make a good classifier, and it was a lot of work. Maybe classifiers have improved enough in the previous four years.