This could be a tool that works across the entire internet but in this case I'm mostly thinking about platforms like Lemmy, Reddit, Twitter, Instagram etc. I'm not necessarily advocating for such thing but mostly just thinking out aloud.
What I'm imagining is something like a truly competent AI assistant that filters out content based on your preferences. As content filtering by keywords and blocking users/communities is quite a blunt weapon, this would be the surgical alternative which lets you be extremely specific in what you want filtered out.
Some examples of the kind of filters you could set would for example be:
- No political threads. Applies only to threads but not comments. Filters out memes aswell based on the content of the media.
- No political content whatsoever. Hides also political comments from non-political threads.
- No right/left wing politics. Self explainatory.
- No right/left wing politics with the exception of good-faith arguments. Filters out trolls and provocateurs but still exposes you to good-faith arguments from the other side.
- No mean, hateful or snide comments. Self explainatory.
- No karma fishing comments. Filters out comments with no real content.
- No content from users that have said/done (something) in the past. Analyzes their post history and acts accordingly. For example hides posts from people that have said mean things in the past.
Now obviously with a tool like this you could build yourself the perfect echo chamber where you're never exposed to new ideas which probably is not optimal but it's also not obvious to me why this would be a bad thing if it's something you want. There's way too much content for you to pay attention to all of it anyway so why not just optimize your feed to only have stuff you're interested in? With a tool like this you could quite easily take a platform that's an absolute dumpster fire like Twitter or Reddit and just clean it up and all of a sudden it's useable again. This could possibly also discourage certain type of behaviour online because it means that trolls for example could no longer reach the people they want to troll.
Personally the way I think about is that since I'm going to spend a certain amount of time online anyways then why not atleast enjoy that time. For example I like discussing/debating ideas on platforms like Lemmy and Reddit but too often I find myself wasting time with someone whose not doing it in a good faith; they're not open to have their mind changed and they're not putting any effort into trying to change my mind either. They just want to dunk on what they deem as a stupid idea and more often than not they're performing for their imagined audience. It would probably be better for us both if I wouldn't engage with people like that to begin with. I really don't need more than one decent person in order to have an interesting discussion. If there's 20 others shouting insults into the void because my content filtering has blocked them I think that's better than me relying on sheer will-power to resist the urge to reply back to these people.