Despite reports to the contrary, Facebook is not currently developing a way to filter spoilers. The idea came from a quote attributed to Ricky Van Veen, head of global creative strategy for Facebook, speaking at the National Association of Television Program Executives. From that information, Deadline and other outlets reported Facebook was working on a filter which would remove spoilers from a user’s newsfeed. However, the quote misses a key element.
Here’s the full quote (emphasis ours):
There’s so much you can do when you have content and conversation happening at scale on the same platform…If we did something where there was a twist every episode, we can make it – this isn’t a feature – spoiler prevention – if you haven’t seen episode 5 yet, you’re not going to see your friend’s comment about episode 5. Those are really easy things to do that no one has really done yet. And I think the reason for that is because it’s hard when you have conversation and viewing happening in two separate places. Hopefully we can work to make some of those things that are true value adds for the Facebook viewer and community at large
The quotes that have been circling start with “If you haven’t seen episode 5,” which really changes things.
If you’d like to see the full talk, here’s the video below. The quote in question comes about 48:20 into it.
So while Facebook isn’t currently working on a spoiler filter, something Van Veen noted would be easy to do, it would be cool if this mistake maybe got the wheels turning. Because it would be an amazing feature.