Filter the politics from your Facebook feed
Sick to death of the election? This Chrome extension promises to rid Facebook of all the chatter.
Brought to you by politics!
It's almost over. We're almost there. In just a few more hours, this disgusting display of political jackanapery will be finished.
If you've sworn off social media until then, I wouldn't blame you. Lately it feels like Facebook should add a tagline: "Brought to you by politics!" Because, let's face it, most of our feeds are rife with political news stories, polls, commentary and opinions -- all of which conspire to angry up the blood.
There are ways to filter out movie and TV spoilers, so why can't there be a filter for the political stuff? Thank heavens, there is, in the form of the Chrome extension Remove All Politics From Facebook. It's basically a toggle switch. When activated, it filters anything and everything political out of your feed.
At least, that's the promise. The developer doesn't specify exactly what's removed, nor do you have any direct control over the filter. It just says "all politics." One would assume that's based on specific names and keywords, and my informal testing bore that out.
For example, note the Trending section in my feed from this morning. This is with Remove All Politics turned off:
And here's the "after," with the extension turned on:
As the developer notes, "memes will still exist," meaning the extension can't do anything about embedded political photos -- but it promises to "take care of all the rest."
Just one wrinkle: When you click the Remove All Politics button (confusingly labeled "off") in your Chrome toolbar, the drop-down menu might perplex you. It says "FB Politics" and then shows a slider set to "off," which to me indicates the filter itself is off. In reality, the "off" slider means it's on -- so politics won't appear in your feed. When you switch it to "on," that means politics will appear in your feed. Seems backward!
Even so, this is a great option for desktop Chrome users who can't stand another entry about...well, I was going to cite examples, but I'm self-filtering this post. You're welcome!
By the way, wonderful as it would be, there's currently no way to apply such filters to the Facebook app. Best bet: Delete it until next Wednesday.