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How to block toxic comments everywhere

Linda Hamilton
Linda HamiltonOriginal
2025-02-24 14:19:06236browse

How to block toxic comments everywhere

Some corners of the internet are bastions of healthy discussion, but in the vast online world, speech seems to be worse than ever. If you’re tired of feeling angry every time you see the bottom of the article or open the social media app of your choice, it’s time to clean up your web conversation.

Block comments on news websites and blogs

Some sites have cancelled the comment function altogether, but many still retain their discussions—even if they are filled with spam and hate speech. You can't stop commenters from spreading filthy words, but you can drive them out of your horizon. "Shut Up" is a simple open source tool that automatically blocks most comment sections on the network. It can be used as an extension for Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Apple Safari, Microsoft Edge, and Opera. Simply install it on your desktop or mobile platform of choice and the comments section disappears as if they never existed.

If you do like reading reviews on a certain website – yes, there are some really good ones – you can click the Shut Up button in the toolbar or press Ctrl Shift XWhite the site on the list. It will remember your preferences, so no matter how many times you leave and return, the comment section you like will remain visible. Unfortunately, certain comments cannot be muted based on keywords.

Note that due to the way Chrome's annoying wide-ranging permissions system works, this extension will request permission to read and edit data on all websites you visit, but you can read the developer's privacy policy to Make sure you agree to it. After that, if you are still upset, you can always check and inject Shut Up CSS code yourself, if you prefer to use stylesheet extensions.

Mute words on Twitter, Instagram and other social networks

Sites and blog comments are just a small part of the toxic web conversations—most of which happens on social media. "Shut Up" blocks comment sections on some networks such as Facebook and Reddit, but this completely goes against the purpose of using these platforms. Thankfully, some services like Twitter and Instagram have realized this and built a “silent” feature that allows you to hide comments containing certain keywords, giving you greater control over what you see.

On Twitter, you can mute tweets containing certain words or phrases by visiting the Twitter website and clicking More on the left sidebar. Next, go to Settings and Support>Settings and Privacy>Privacy and Security>Mute and Block> 🎜>Music words. Finally, click the plus icon in the upper right corner to add the word to your list. In a mobile app, the steps are almost the same, but you first need to click on your avatar in the upper left corner of the screen, and then use the Add button in the lower right corner to create a list of muted words. You can also choose how long you want to mute when adding words you want to avoid – this will be very useful if you just want to avoid spoilers for a few days.

[Related: How to Improve Your Twitter Account Security]

Instagram has similar mute features, but it only works for comments on your posts (not others’ posts). First, go to your profile in the app and click on the three lines

in the upper right corner. Go to Settings and Privacy and scroll down to Hidden Word. There are many options on this page, but if you want to mute specific words, click Manage custom words and phrases and start adding words. Then activate the toggle next to Hide Comments and Hide Message Request as you want to hide anything that contains your muted words.

If you want to do less work, you can also open the switch under the title of offensive words and phrases at the top of the page to hide comments or message requests containing any words Instagram thinks you don't want to see.

Other social networks (such as Reddit) do not have built-in mute functionality. However, browser extensions like the popular Reddit Enhancement Suite will allow you to equally mute comments containing certain words. Install the extension and open the RES Settings console. Navigate to the sub-section >filteReddit and create filters according to your preferences. You can hide posts with specific terms in your title, or block posts from selected websites. You can also build filters for comments, provided you know how regular expressions work – use small tutorials if you want.

Lastly, Facebook is in a weird position when it comes to muting or filtering comments. Back in June 2018, Facebook began testing a feature called Keyword Pause, which allows you to hide any comments containing the words you specify. It is not available to everyone and the test ends in January 2021. Now, the best way is to click on the three dots in the upper right corner of any post in the news feed and select Hide posts to see fewer similar posts. From the same menu, you can pause and unfollow the person or page that posted the post.

Without built-in mute buttons, a popular browser extension Social Fixer can create powerful keyword filters from the

filters section of its settings. Like Reddit Enhancement Suite, these can get a little complicated and require some syntax, but you can read more about your options on its Github page. Again, if you are worried about installing an extension from a developer you don't know, you can browse the code yourself and install it separately. Remember that any time you install a browser extension to get this feature, it will only mute posts on that particular computer - so Social Fixer and Reddit Enhancement Suite cannot help you with the mobile app because it cannot be done in Install the extension in the mobile application. We can only hope that companies like Facebook continue to build these features into their apps so we don’t have to rely on third parties and workarounds to do this for us. But for now, it's better than nothing.

This story has been updated. It was originally published on March 1, 2019.

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