How to kill your Facebook driven BuzzFeed quiz addiction (and take control of your news feed)

Earlier this year I gave a couple of things up for Lent. Chocolate!? Well after a day or so salivating over Crunchie bars in my local newsagent, I pretty much forgot it existed.

However my second choice for abstinence – BuzzFeed quizzes – was to prove a lot more tricky.

In spite of deciding to eschew the ‘great time thief’ I couldn’t get rid myself of the temptation because my Facebook feed was cluttered up with loads of – what type of vegetable would you be? (spinach, actually) – type quizzes which begged to be filled in.
What I really needed was a Facebook blocker to filter out all mentions of those quizzes, but still keep me abreast of the music my friends were listening to and pics of shenanigans from their nights out.

Well, now I have two to choose from. Both only work with Chrome, but that’s the browser I use anyhow (and while we are on the subject you really need this genius Chrome app if you live in the UK and like cats) so that’s fine for me.

The basic version is called Sh*tblocker and after you have installed it you tell it which keyword or URL you want to avoid and it will stop that from clogging up your feed.

Of course block BuzzFeed though and you might miss the wonderful bits of journalism – like this – that the site delivers. So a better option might be Social Fixer. This is a more sophisticated tool which gives you a greater degree of control of your Facebook feed. As well as allowing you to filter out stories by keyword, author etc it also enables you to see a full picture just hovering over it, hides posts you have already read and even allows you to customise the look of your news feed a little.

Both are free – so if you have a BuzzFeed quiz addiction, or for example want to banish all mentions of UKIP from your feed you know what to do.