How to avoid spoilers online and in chats

With multiple streaming The services you can choose from and the entire history of film and TV you can delve into, you’d be forgiven for not keeping up to date with the latest movies and shows. This is where spoilers can hit you.

Whether it’s a twisty thriller on Netflix or the season finale of a show on Apple TV, there will be times when you’re not ready to watch something and yet don’t want the plot to be spoiled for you. When you are in this scenario, connecting to the Internet is risky.

You can’t eliminate this risk completely, but there are ways to reduce the chances of something ruining yours.

Mute your social media

Courtesy of David Nield

Many major social media platforms come with ways to mute posts that contain certain words, giving you a way to hide content that references specific movies and shows. For this to really work, you’ll need to choose your silent words carefully, and you may want to include abbreviations and abbreviations for the content in question, just to be sure.

On X, for example, you can open Settings and privacy From the left menu on desktop or mobile, then choose Privacy & Security > Mute & Block > Muted Words. Any posts containing the words you select here will not appear in your timeline and will not trigger any in-app notifications. For each word or phrase, you can also specify a time period for muting to take effect.

If Bluesky is the social platform of choice, open it Settings From the navigation menu on the left, then choose Supervision > Silent words and signs. As with X, you can choose to mute words for a certain period of time or until you unmute them again. Topics have something similar under Hidden words in privacy Menu.

Use browser extensions

Ban words in spoiler protection.Courtesy of David Nield

One of the main benefits of using browser extensions to avoid spoilers is that they can cover every website you visit, including social media sites. They’re not infallible when it comes to hiding everything that needs to be hidden, but they can certainly help.