This is a tough one... on one hand I like it but on the other hand it can be used to further push droves of people deeper into their clueless echo chambers of misinformation (I hate the term Fake news) dictated by our confirmation bias tendencies. I feel torn because I have been rather public in my demands to Flipboard to give us users an option to do just this....the ability to filter certain subjects from their feed. They have responded saying it is on the road map and it will take some time....which I don't believe. I think we should be able to have more control over our filter bubbles....especially in light of what's going on politically these says with spreading censorship by the left. We cannot continue to be ostriches by sticking our heads in the ground and that is my fear with this type of tool. We ALL need to meet in the middle and have unpleasant and sometimes eye-opening and mind-changing discussions. Otherwise we should just call this tool SafeSpaceMaker. What do you think?
@paisano Completely agree. I was literally, just yesterday, reading through Pieter's twitter feed and thinking how much I admired his skills and thought-provoking discussions re: email/Twitter DMs! But this is just another example of tech folks who are willfully neglecting politics and helping each other – and those who follow them – become more ignorant to what's happening.
How did we end up with a madman in power? Because most people stuck their head in the sand and refused to educate themselves or vote for the saner alternative.
You don't want to see Game of Thrones spoilers on Twitter? Cool. But willful ignorance about what's happening in politics does not "cleanse your mind" to "make you more productive." All it does is give the lunatics a bigger piece of the discussion pie by involving fewer sane people.
@paisano So glad someone made this point. I was literally laying in bed trying to sleep last night and couldn't stop thinking about how disturbing a product like this actually is and what it means for society or tech culture as a whole. You saved me from a lot of anxiety filled typing. Yes I absolutely love @levelsio's work, he's a master at bringing ideas to fruition. But this was made far too accessible to the masses. People will being muting everything remotely related to politics (or more likely: politics they *don't agree with*).
The only thing more dangerous than living in a conservative-dominant country is having the majority of the left party living in willful ignorance. Guess what? Conservatives are talking, and they're being extremely loud. If we're not responding to it, who's voice is heard by the masses? And if we're just speaking in an echo chamber, who (that matters) is actually listening?
It's cool to have people agreeing with you, but both sides of the coin need to exist for progress to happen. It's the yin and yang. If we're not listening to conservatives, why the fuck are they going to listen to us?
@paisano@jordankrueger I respect your disagreement.
Personally I question the efficacy of daily outrage about geopolitics by individuals like me who can't affect it except for voting people into power.
Also, what most American seem to forget: I'm a Netherlands citizen and like most people in the world have no electoral power to influence your politics which dominates our discourse.
The rest of the world is not America. Your culture is not ours, so I think we have the right to not listen to your political discourse. You voted, not us.
@jordankrueger@levelsio I hope most people aren't interested solely in US politics. We should all care about what's going on globally not just locally.... everything reverberates across the world. The nightmares of Europe have ripple effects to these shores.
👋 Hi Product Hunters!
🤔 Problem
It seems like every week there's a new hot political issue that dominates the social timeline of Facebook and Twitter.
I respect the people that do try to change things. But for me, news about Trump, North Korea and other stuff I can't affect only makes me more scared, angry and feeling powerless.
💡 Idea
I've been experimenting with muting political keywords from my Twitter timeline for the last few months. And it's been working well. I feel less powerless and I can spend my time on actually affecting change in the communities where I am on a local scale with the people around me. It's more effective for me than trying to change things on a global scale. The peace I get from not seeing politics on social media makes me more calm and gives me more time left to actually affect change around me. Where I actually have reach.
🛠 Solution
I created an app based on this premise. It collectively crowdsources muted word lists and lets you add them to filter your Twitter timeline.
I hope to add an extension so it works for Facebook soon too!
P.S. I understand if you disagree with the premise of this app. It's a touchy subject and we all have our own ways of dealing with it.
@levelsio According to my Facebook feed, everyone is a political expert.
Remove that rhetoric and what am I left with?
GoT fan theories from HuffPost... 😉
Nice simple solution to a specific problem, as always Pieter. Look forward to checking this out!
Timber
eu/acc: European Accelerationism
eu/acc: European Accelerationism
Spare
FlowLayout
eu/acc: European Accelerationism