Twitter Suggestion – Open to Ideas?

Two very prominent people in the software development world were having a discussion on twitter.   The one was suggesting/joking that the other one said they promised to keep their political views to another twitter account.  The first replied in twitter that he had made no such promise.

I read these public messages and an idea popped in my head.  What if we could add a filter on our list.  We could add a filter tag such as #political and instead of seeing everything on that topic, it would filter everything out on that topic.  I suggested this seemingly good idea including the two who had given me this idea.

The response I got was unexpected.

@BillyGarnet #political How about using your eyes and mind to filter tweets. Or do we not even want to be exposed to different ideas?

Ironic message indeed since I was proposing a new idea…

Now from another very prominent person in the software development world.

@BillyGarnet What we need are more tools so people don’t have to listen to each other #sarcasmOff ow

I must be missing something here.  People are reacting like I just suggested drowning kittens is a good idea.

For the record, I love hearing all the personal, political, and non software related views I get from some people that I really admire.   But others say that they don’t so maybe we can have a tool that they can use.  Many people have limited time to do things.  They might not want to read about certain tags.

Here’s an example:  Blogger A loves to hear what Blogger B talks about.  However Blogger B is a huge soccer/football/whatever fan.  If blogger B was diligent about using hashtags like #soccer, Blogger A could implement the #soccer filter in his settings.  This would nicely remove all the #soccer posts showing up on his page.  Blogger C meanwhile, a big #soccer fan, could get all the wonderful tweets about #soccer coming from Blogger B.

There it is, my suggestion, with an example.

Please give me some feedback.  I would especially love to gain the understanding of what is so “wrong” with this.