Block Unwanted Facebook Posts
(Kim Komando USA TODAY) ...It's easy to block updates from Facebook friends who are temporarily getting under your skin. Hover over your friend's name, then hover over the Friends menu and deselect Show in News Feed.
Selecting Settings under the Friends menu allows you to control the amounts and types of updates you receive from a friend. You can screen a friend's status updates, life events and photos, for example, but continue to receive her music and video posts.
Not in the mood for a Facebook quiz this week? You can hide stories and unsubscribe from any person, Page, group or app.
If you encounter a political post or other story that is particularly annoying, report it as spam. That will remove it from your news feed, and Facebook's filters will try to block similar content in the future.
For more industrial-strength filtering, install a browser extension such as Social Fixer.
Social Fixer lets you define rules - similar to email - to control what stories you want to see and hide. You can quickly choose one or all of your friends, then choose to hide status updates, photos and other types of posts. The ability to add key words makes this free tool even more powerful.
Keep in mind that Social Fixer is a browser plug-in; it has no effect on your Facebook account or what you'll see on a different computer or gadget.
On Twitter, there isn't much you can do to filter content short of blocking or unfollowing users. But Twitter's own TweetDeck app for mobile and desktop contains a global filter in Settings to block people, words, and hashtags.
You might also want to visit the extension galleries of Firefox, Chrome and Safari to find other plug-ins that promise to clean up your Twitter news feeds.
If you like to watch movie or video game trailers on YouTube, but avoid the site because of all the nasty comments and spoilers, there's help.
Clea.nr Videos for YouTube not only blocks comments, it also removes the clutter of ads and promoted videos. The free extension works with Safari, Chrome and Firefox; there's also an Apple iOS app ($1).
More generalized browser plug-ins can help you hide the comments sections across blogs and other websites you visit.
These controls and tweaks aren't perfect -- an irritating post will get through somehow -- but they should help you regain some of your sanity.
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