The last time Trump won, there was this constant barrage of scandals and frankly horrifying news permeating my online experience. And while I admit that from my European perspective, there was some entertainment in the whole thing, the experience was more exhausting than anything else.

I like to keep up with the news, but I also like my mental health. Are there any effective strategies for keeping the amount of trump-spam I’m exposed to at an absolute minimum, while also keeping up with whatever else is going on in the world?

  • kamenLady.
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    21 hour ago

    If you use the Google feed in pixel launcher, add the keywords you want to block.

    That was the first thing i did 2016…

  • 🧟‍♂️ Cadaver
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    316 hours ago

    I have a filter on, I block the words “Elon”, “Kamala” and “Trump”. Furthermore I block politics community. It’s not like they are about anything else than US politics anyway.

    • Jo Miran
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      63 hours ago

      Unfortunately, posts that do include the keyword in the text but not in the title, still get through. Case in point, this one.

      • 🧟‍♂️ Cadaver
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        43 hours ago

        It’s true, it also doesn’t block images that have these words, but you filter more than 90% of the posts that you wouldn’t want to see.

    • @[email protected]
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      136 hours ago

      Legitimate question, did you temporarily disable it, or did it just not manage to block this post because those words aren’t in the title?

      • @serenissi
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        55 hours ago

        I think they blocked in all and this community is subbed?

  • MudMan
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    105 hours ago

    I am genuinely considering moving away from English language social media altogether. I find my native language media… kind of exhausting, honestly, but it’s still better than what the last Trump term triggered, so… maybe? It has the side advantage of countering some of the whole cultural imperialism, because hey, I’ll suffer it from US coastal elites, but I desperately need an alternative if it’s going to be coming form Elon Musk and Donald Trump, so…

  • @[email protected]
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    6 hours ago

    This problem has already been solved by content filtering. You can make your own filtering system, or you can just use a browser plugin like the famous Make The Internet Great Again which filters out all Trump related News articles.

    • @LeavingoldhabitsOP
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      65 hours ago

      Thanks, I’ll look into what the Firefox extension community has. For now I figure I’ll go down to the pub, have a pint, and wait for all of this to blow over.

      • @[email protected]
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        139 minutes ago

        You can also use uBlock origin for that. You just need to make custom filter, and use GPT to figure out exactly what kind of code to write in that box. Different sites call their headlines with different names, so it may require some tweaking.

  • @Stovetop
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    106 hours ago

    Some apps/frontends have keyword filters, could just filter out the word “Trump” as a way of trimming down the feed.

    • @LeavingoldhabitsOP
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      36 hours ago

      Thanks, I’m using voyager and am filtering some keywords already. While it helps a good bit on here, I guess I’m more looking for an ad block extension for Firefox, but for trump and trump adjacent content. Ideally something that includes what his business partners and associates in the government are up to.

      • @[email protected]
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        35 hours ago

        Hi, if you’re on Android I can recommend Blokada5. Get the 5.21.0 version from a mirror because newer versions (the only ones you find on the play store) will only give you one month and then force you to upgrade your account.

        As an ad blocker it works for your entire phone, not just Firefox. I don’t have any adblockers for my browsers.

      • @[email protected]
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        25 hours ago

        I’ve used the Spoiler Protection 2.0 extension in the past, though it hasn’t been updated in a long time so there may be a better option.

        It doesn’t block content but places a big red overlay over links, headlines, images (that are tagged) and videos. It’s not fool proof but definitely useful if you want to block “Trump” or “Musk” or whatever else.

  • @ThatWeirdGuy1001
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    -94 hours ago

    “How do I bury my head in the sand and act like none of this is real?”

    This is what everyone who says shit like this sounds like. I get that it’s not your country but the fact remains that it’s still going to effect you as well.

    • @LeavingoldhabitsOP
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      94 hours ago

      Why should I willingly expose myself to a firehose of increasingly terrifying news that I can do absolutely nothing about? The only possible outcome of consuming that media is increased anxiety and stress on a personal level, so I want to limit my exposure.

      I’m sure if anything important happens, I’ll pick it up through osmosis anyway.

    • @[email protected]
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      34 hours ago

      Would you like 5️ times per day updates on all the inane and to you entirely unrelatable and irrelevant day to day details of what the politicians in germany do or say? No?

      Well tough shit it is now on every official news outlet, plastered over the internet and social media, and referenced anywhere you might come in contact with germans. You also get constant reminders that you should care about this despite the fact that you can’t vote in Germany and the fact that german domestic politics have zero effect on your existence.

      • @ThatWeirdGuy1001
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        -24 hours ago

        Except what the leader of Germany decides to do doesn’t generally affect the entire planet. At the same time if the leader of Germany was a racist, sexist, fascist, bigoted piece of shit hell bent on becoming a dictator I’d wanna know about every detail.

        • @[email protected]
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          14 minutes ago

          Whatever trump does inside the united states doesn’t affect me. If he is closing or opening borders, if he is shitting his diapers, if he is dropping yet another incoherent ramble about something, doesnt matter to me at all.

          This doesnt mean I wish to be ignorant of what foreign policies he pursues, it just means I dont need the constant barrage of irrelevant outrage.

          E: also, we have our own right wingers gathering strength, why is that not of utmost importance to you as you say? Perhaps because it is irrelevant to you?