Sunday, September 29, was a tremendously exciting—albeit bittersweet—date in television history for fans of AMC’s “Breaking Bad.” 10.3 million of those fans tuned into the final episode of that gloriously bleak series, then had the distinctly modern pleasure of firing up their connected device of choice right afterward, clicking on their favorite social network/s, and immediately telling the world what they thought about the conclusion to Walter White’s epic saga.

For those fans unable to tune in to the finale, however, that same mobile device suddenly became fraught with danger and betrayal, a devious second screen revealer of secrets, where any (even just one!) of the tens of millions of finale-related comments, posts and tags could blow past any given social network at any given time… and ruin everything.

It’s an all-too-common scenario in this era of undiluted public chatter: the social media spoiler. And for Josh Solt, co-founder of a new Los Angeles-based startup called Spoiler Shield, a tipping point came around the “Red Wedding” episode of “Game of Thrones,” when a frenzy of online blabber revealed one of the great surprises in TV history for many viewers who couldn’t make the live broadcast on HBO. “We were tired of our friends spoiling sports scores and TV-show plot twists through social media,” Holt recently told mediabistro.

Holt’s Spoiler Shield, a free app now available for iOS, uses a proprietary algorithm to try and provide a solution to this distinctly modern problem. Allowing users access to both their Facebook and Twitter feeds, Spoiler Shield features switches that turn on and off “shields” pertaining to social chatter about specific TV shows and sports teams. Blocked posts and tweets arrive in the social streams with a shield emblem covering them, which the user can simply click to reveal… should they choose to take the risk.

To date, Spoiler Shield offers protection from more than 30 TV show social chatter streams, including such oft-trending series as “The Walking Dead,” “Pretty Little Liars” and of course “Breaking Bad,” which many new fans are still catching up on despite the series being over. It also contains shields covering every NFL and MLB team.

“Spoiler Shield lets users stay connected, yet remain in control,” the app’s other co-founder, Matthew Leow, added. And more control options are on the way, including a pending ability to set a recurring schedule of social blockage for specific time periods, such as every Sunday when you have your NFL package queued up on the DVR for watching after work/yardwork/family obligations.

Learn more about Spoiler Shield here.

[Image courtesy of Spoiler Shield]

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