We've all been there. You want to get online, specifically to scan your favorite social media platforms, but you know the internet landscape will be filled to bursting with spoilers about the latest hot episode of TV you haven't been able to watch just yet. No one wants to head over to Facebook to see how their former college roommate's birthday party went only to end up getting important details about the latest episode of Game of Thrones or Outlander. Well, now the site is trying to help you stay in the dark with a bit more ease. As of this Wednesday, Facebook is testing a new feature, called Keyword Snooze, with a percentage of users, and it looks like a dream come true for folks hoping not to accidentally spoil new episodes of television for themselves.
Technically, Keyword Snooze works on any word or phrase you want to keep from showing up in your news feed on Facebook. Once users turn on the new feature, it will snooze posts from pages, groups and individuals that use that word or phrase in the post. News items with your chosen keywords will be blocked for you for a period of 30 days, and then let back into your feed unless you make sure to re-snooze them.
Keyword Snooze is being added to a new suite of news feed controls that also includes options like Unfollow, See First and Hide. If you're in the test market for Keyword Snooze and you want to use it, you'll first need to find a post that includes the keyword you want to snooze. From there, you'll be able to click on a drop down arrow which will show you a "snooze keywords in this post" option. Once you click on that, you'll be shown a list of words and phrases in the post that you can choose to snooze, thereby blocking future stories about those things for 30 days. Note, though, that ads using those keywords will not be blocked. While it's possible that a Facebook ad about The Blacklist or Grey's Anatomy could give you a major spoiler, it's unlikely, so you should be safe to check out your news feed spoiler-free at that point.
As I mentioned earlier, this will work for anything you want blocked from your timeline for 30 days. So, if what you need in your life right now is to not see any dogs in sweaters on your news feed, this new Facebook feature can take care of that for you. Honestly, though, this really does sound like a brilliant development for those of us who want to be able to peruse the site without getting spoilers about our favorite shows by accident. The number of people who feel they have to undergo a self-imposed social media blackout because they can't watch the newest episode of Westworld or NCIS is probably not insignificant, and now they have a way to check out at least one social media site without fear.
According to Entertainment Weekly, Keyword Snooze will slowly be rolled out to a couple of million users by next week, and if it proves popular it will then be rolled out to a wider user base. If you're in the test group, be sure to let us know how you like the feature in the comments below!
