Before the Internet craze and social media, there were very few ways that your favorite TV shows’ finale episode would be ruined for you. You could pop your VHS tape into the VCR, record your episode and watch it later.
You definitely wouldn’t encounter friend’s news feeds that clearly spoiled the happenings of your favorite series.
Now, thanks to DVRs, you can record many of your favorites and catch up on them at your convenience. The problem is you encounter those pesky viewers who have already watched the show and won’t stop talking about it on social media or writing news articles about it.
Google has now patented the “processing content spoilers” system so that TV shows (or sports games, movies and books) aren’t ruined for you.
The system includes a controller for receiving activity information performed by a person and any information published on the Internet by anyone else regarding the first person’s actions. So the person who’s trying not to have their favorite TV show spoiled would make that request in the system and spoiler alert warnings would be generated if the person is about to stumble upon information they do not want to see. Then he or she can choose whether or not to continue reading.
Another capability the system could have would be tracking your friends’ progress of the same shows, sports games and movies so that if one of those friends posted anything regarding something you haven’t completed, you would receive a spoiler warning and asked if you want to read the post.
In order for the system to track your progress as you view shows and movies, you’ll probably have to cough-up even more personal information to Google.
Keep in mind that there’s always good-old-fashioned word of mouth to spoil things for you.
View Google’s patent at the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
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