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Meddling Kids

New Program Will Remove Photos Of Babies From Your Facebook Feed

by Jill Pantozzi | 12:55 pm, August 4th, 2012


Look, babies are great and all – they help us continue on as a species or whatever – but sometimes there’s too many of them in my Facebook news feed. If you’re like me (and I know a lot of folks who are), there’s a new program that will help. It’s called Unbaby Me. That’s right. Get rid of those unyielding baby photos without offending your friends! 

This almost sounds like a dream come true, doesn’t it? Whatever your reason – and there are some pretty legitimate ones – you may not want to look at your friends/families’ babies. I’m fine with a few here and there, even look forward to some, but there are those people (you know the type) who post nothing but status updates concerning their children’s progress. Inside the womb and out.

Unbaby Me is a Google Chrome extension created specifically for Facebook. According to the website it, “deletes the babies from your news feed permanently, by replacing them with awesome stuff.” So how exactly does this work? Yahoo explains:

The program scans your news feed for key words including “So adorable,” “Cute baby,” or “First steps.” Once a key word is identified in a picture caption, the photo is replaced with one from a photo feed that’s fully customizable. Unbaby Me comes pre-loaded to swap out little tikes with cat pictures, but you can change it to anything you’d prefer to see such as puppies, fashion, even bacon. We tested out the extension by posting a baby pic ourselves. Sure enough, when viewing it on a browser with Unbaby Me installed, a photo of a cat from Instagram was staring back at us in its place. The caption read: “Baby removed.”

It might defeat the purpose by leaving “baby removed” to let you know a picture has been changed though. Perhaps simply something like “photo swapped” would be better. And of course, this type of algorithm has its quirks. For instance, I might caption an illustration of baby Batman on a pile of money with the word “adorable.” It would be a shame for my friends to miss that (presumably).

What do you think of this new technology? Is it something you’d utilize?

(via Yahoo, image via Pocket-Lint)

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  • Anonymous

    What I saw that headline, I honestly thought this was something FB thought up to stop the spread of kiddie porn.

    How sad that my first reaction is to assume the stupidest and worst.

  • Anonymous

    I do hope I was the first to send this article to STFUParents. I almost wish that I hadn’t already “hid” all of the parents from my News Feed so I could try this out.

  • http://profile.yahoo.com/5FKKARVWBVIBI7ULPXQQLDKTCM Moonkyst

    I don’t mind pictures of babies and I love the cat pictures.  I wish they would come up a way to delete pictures of injured animals and children and bloody pictures of Jesus.  And since I’m not religious, I wish they could come up with a way to delete all the stuff my Christian friends post.  I hate even looking at facebook on Sundays!

  • Sam Boswell

     ME TOO!!!  How about an algorithm that takes out “prayers,” “pray for me,” “god bless,” etc?  I would PAY for that one!

  • Sanjay Merchant

    They should totally have named this “Shut Up About Babies” in honor of Kate Beaton.

  • Anonymous

     Yeah, I’ve just un-subscribed from the baby-obsessed folks in my feed already … TBH, they never post anything I want to read even when it’s not baby related! (same goes for religious people, etc)

  • Kaitlyn Cocuzzo

    I would never use this. I love babies, and all pictures of them :-)

  • http://www.domesticchaos.com Ashley

    My problem is my nephew (*not* old enough to be on FB, even) who reposts nothing but things like “Click Like if you love Jesus, KEEP SCROLLING IF YOU LIKE SATAN” and things of about that intellectual level. 

    Political pictures is mine. I have friends on both overblown ends of the politic spectrum, and it’s exhausting.

  • Anonymous

    Eh, I wouldn’t use it, I love babies!

  • Anonymous

    I want a program that deletes/hides all posts containing the phrase “__% of people won’t repost this” because every single one of those is terrible. 

  • http://zadl.org/ Captain ZADL

    I need that plugin for Safari. And FB mobile on iOS. Now.

  • Debbie Lindsay

    haha – I was thinking exactly the same thing. As long as B get’s it, it doesn’t matter who was first

  • http://profile.yahoo.com/MO6JWIEHBXWVJ24J36VRQIETMU SharonK

    I really want one that blocks people’s smug vacation photos!

  • http://twitter.com/rockinlibrarian Amy M Weir

    Right, I’d rather have one that hides simplistic opinionated political stuff and, as someone said, the “If you don’t “like” or repost this you’re a terrible person” ones. Heck, I just wish my “hide comments and likes by…” setting still worked, because it seems to have quit recently.

  • http://twitter.com/smoke_tetsu Smoke Tetsu

    “Get rid of those unyielding baby photos without offending your friends!” Until your friends wonder if you had seen their latest photos of their baby and wonder why you seem to be ignoring them. :P

  • http://idleprimate.blogspot.ca/ idleprimate

    i like this.  but i see it opening a floodgate of apps, until a day arrives where people are still addicted to facebook, but nothing in anyone’s feed is what was posted originally.  facebook ceases to be interactive in any way, everyone’s wall is a customized filter making it appear that all of their friends only post the things they want to see.  over time, people forget they have enabled all these apps and believe these posts to be true.  all facebook users come to feel they are in harmony with humanity.

  • http://twitter.com/amberdaaawn Amber Dawn

    I think it would be great if social media started incorporating the ability to “unfollow” topics… maybe with a little “post removed” so you could correct for things you wanted to see.. for instance, I’m ok with babies to a point, but would love to erase any chain letters type things, and extreme political propaganda from all outer ends of the spectrum.. 

  • http://twitter.com/amberdaaawn Amber Dawn

    EXACTLY, with the politics. I am fairly liberal but find I don’t want to hear overblown, ignorant rhetoric even from people I agree with.. 

  • Charlotte DeKoning

    You know, I’ve been using it for a day now, and it doesn’t really work that well.  Seeing as it can only identify words, not pictures, it doesn’t help for those people who post dozens of pictures and never caption them (who are the worst offenders, often) – or people who caption their baby pictures with something that would be impractical to have as a search term.

    Good concept, I just wish it worked better!

  • http://twitter.com/Sarah_Nicolas Sarah Nicolas

    I don’t mind lots of pictures of babies. What I *do* mind is updates every five minutes about their development – including every freaking bowel movement. I will never ever get the parents who talk about fully, dirty diapers and “accidents” on facebook.

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