Spoilers are the worst. It totally sucks when your friends are watching the latest episode of "Mad Men" and tweeting about it, while you have to wait until the next day to watch the episode. But what can you do?
Google may have created an option that could protect you from spoilers, reports Quartz. The tech giant was recently awarded a patent titled "Processing content spoilers." In the patent, Google outlines a system for blocking out posts that pertain to culturally and socially spoiler-filled TV shows and movies.
"The patent suggests users would track their progress with content on a social network-think how Netflix currently posts what of its content you're watching on your Facebook feed if you link those accounts-and Google's system would be able to determine when another user was posting something about that same piece of content, and if they were posting about a part you hadn't reached yet," according to Quartz.
If that occured, the content in question would be blurred out, a warning tab would appear noting the spoiler-filled nature of the post, and would ask if you wished to continue reading it. Users would also have the ability to mark content as spoilery, so that the system definitely knows when a post is spoiler-filled and when it isn't.
While this sounds great in our media-focused communities, there are a few questions to ask about where the service wants to go. For example, what social media networks would this system sync up with? Would it exist as an add-on or a permanent function? It's unclear.
When Quartz approached Google for comment, Google said that "some ideas mature into real products or services, some don't." In other words, its unclear if Google will ever implement this patent.
