New Chrome extension blocks political speech on Facebook

PanARMENIAN.Net - With the U.S. presidential election less than two weeks away, social networking users can be forgiven for having grown tired of reading online political rants. Now, thanks to a new Chrome extension, fed-up Facebook fans can nip their friends' tirades in the bud, The Register reports.

When installed in the Chrome browser, Unpolitic.me sifts through the user's online feeds looking for keywords that indicate political commentary. When it finds them, it removes the offending posts, replacing them with content from image-based RSS feeds of the user's choice.

The extension is the product of a collaboration between Buzzfeed and the makers of Unbaby.me, an earlier plug-in designed to filter baby pictures from users' news feeds.

While Unbaby.me only worked on Facebook, however, the new plugin is equally adept at flushing unwanted political speech from Twitter. The only catch is that while Unbaby.me is available for both Chrome and Firefox, so far Unpolitic.me only works with Google's browser.

Among the preprogrammed – although deletable – keywords that trigger Unpolitic.me's filters are the names "romney," "obama," "ron paul," "paul ryan," and "reagan," among others, in addition to such red-flag words and phrases as "deficit," "taxes," "trickle down economics," "binders," "fox news," and "how messed up is this country."

Users are free to add their own keywords as additional hot-button topics emerge.