Google granted patent for system that blocks spoilers

Google has been granted a patent for a system which that zaps TV and movie spoilers for web users. A spoiler is a piece of information related to TV shows or movies that the viewers had not yet watched.

The proposed filter spots and hides spoilers and removes them from social media feeds until users were up-to-date.

Some people already manually change their social media settings to block specific words and avoid spoilers. Google now plans to take the step further, with a smarter mechanism which can hide spoilers only for episodes a user had not yet seen.

The content would be blocked, the user could, however, click to override the feature.

The system would work on users continually logging onto a book or TV series to know how far through they were. They can then link Kindle or Netflix accounts, for example, with the blocking tool.

However, a Google spokesman warned that people need not get too excited about the service, as the search company held patents on a variety of ideas, some of which later matured into real products or services, while others did not.

It was not clear how Google would integrate the feature into social networks it did not own, or whether it would add it to the Google Chrome browser.

The number of people watching TV programmes and films on catch-up services was on the rise, which made spoilers a problem in the social media age.

Streaming services like Netlfix and Amazon's Fire TV already logged the shows watched by users, and how far they were in to each episode.

The ability to mute keywords from a user's timeline is already supported on Twitter and several of its third-party client apps.