So I’ve been working on a Politics filter for boost. I come to lemmy for memes and I get my new elsewhere, I just find everyone’s arguing annoying, so I made a filter!
How to install: in boost, go to settings, advanced, backup, and hit import app settings and select the file
FAQ: 1: What’s blocked?: Mostly US politics based keywords, and most country names, as well as common political words, plus various news communities or ones that had mostly political content
2:Is this a virus?: nope, just a JSON you can open in your favorite text editor to check. your call though.
3:I don’t like this because X: Calmly and firmly position X towards your backside and insert into your anal cavity
4:I still see some political stuff!: yeah the filters not perfect but I’ve gotten a majority of political content off my c/all. Add what you feel you need, this is just a framework
5: Why didn’t you add X keyword?: boost seems to use a substring method when filtering, meaning if I add “republic”, that blocks any post containing “Republic of congo” or “republican”. I have noticed crashing after a certain high number of filter keywords so I have cut down the list quite a bit. You should be okay to add more though
6: 600 word explanation on why blocking politics is morally wrong: refer to solution #3
7: will you update this?:maybe, but it will be infrequent and it’s not like I have a better way to auto push updates to boost so you would have to come back and download it. Seems not worth the trouble
That’s it, lmk what you think and if it works well for you!
boost seems to use a substring method when filtering, meaning if I add “republic”, that blocks any post containing “Republic of congo” or “republican”.
It looks like you’ve got some pretty short words in there, though, like “us” and “oil”.
Wouldn’t that block things like “boiling spaghetti”, “user”, “bus”, and a ton of other benign words?
Also, for what it’s worth, some of the words can be used pretty often in non-political connexts. “Fpv” is “first person view” in RC hobbies, for example, and “jail” is used in BSD-based operating systems.
Like I said it’s not perfect, but feel free to tailor it to your own preferences.
I would love if someday boost added regex to the filters, but idk how difficult that would be to implement
Regex would be a nice addition.
Unfortunately, I think Boost is still closed source, so there’s little that can be done to improve it.
Awesome!
Great work, and even if someone doesn’t like what you’re filtering, you’ve provided a great example for others to build their own.
Edit: fix the messed up autocorrect
Thanks friend
