The one Twitter setting you should turn on right now for peace of mind

Twitter app icon on iPhone screen

Twitter is a bad website filled with bots, misinformation, and most importantly, people you just don’t want to hear from. It could also get worse soon.

If you haven’t already, you’ll undoubtedly take a second to reconsider your tweeting habits going forward amidst a potential ownership shift to the site’s most annoying poster, Elon Musk. Musk may actually follow through with his plan to ease the site’s moderation practices, allowing people you really don’t want to interact with to flood your mentions if you say something that doesn’t tickle their fancies. 

Having swarms of bots, losers, or other malcontents in your notifications tab can be enough to dissuade you from tweeting at all. There isn’t a perfect solution to this, but there is one little box you can check in your Twitter settings to (mostly) rid yourself of these pests. I did this a couple of years ago and it made Twitter infinitely more tolerable.

Here’s how you can live a more peaceful life tweeting about lunch and joking with your pals like I do.

How to mute notifications from strangers on Twitter

First, some context. I don’t have a massive Twitter account following or anything, but I’ve got enough followers that every now and then one of my stupid thoughts blows up well past its intended audience. People see a blue checkmark next to something like “it should be legal to eat pizza out of bowls” (that one, sadly, didn’t actually go viral) and decide it must be important enough to retweet. I appreciate the love, but I don’t appreciate when people who don’t know me or don’t understand what jokes are decide they need to tell me about it.

People on Twitter love doing that! I can’t stop them, but I can ensure I never need to see it. If you’re in a similar boat, where you’d only like to see responses from people you have some familiarity with (but don’t want to lock your account down), follow these simple steps:

  1. Go to the “Settings and privacy” menu

  2. Click “Privacy and safety”

  3. Click “Mute and block,” then click “Muted notifications”

  4. Check the box next to “Who don’t follow you”

Twitter settings menu for privacy and security

The most useful settings on Twitter, by far.
Credit: Screenshot: Twitter

If you haven’t picked up on it yet, this feature will automatically filter out any likes, retweets, quote retweets, and mentions you get from anyone who doesn’t already follow you. There are also a bunch of other options in the same menu for muting notifications from people with new accounts, unconfirmed email addresses, and so on, if you want to weed out bots and burner accounts while you’re at it.

But in my experience, I’ve found that just getting rid of people who don’t already rock with me has improved Twitter considerably. Sometimes I share opinions about politics, sports, Elon Musk, cryptocurrency, and other things that can make annoying people very upset with me. Of course, I don’t think my thoughts are all that controversial, but that’s just me. 

The important part is that, after checking that box, I never have to know about it. The other day, someone let me know that a tweet of mine had appeared under a particularly noxious trending topic. I’m sure someone out there in the Twitter wilderness thought it necessary to yell at me about it. They’re free to shout into the void, but I’m also free to go about my damn business, blissfully unaware that it’s happening. 

Allow me, dear reader, to bestow this same freedom unto you. Go and tweet unburdened by the dregs of social media. I promise it’ll help.

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Neil Patrick Harris deals with a bad breakup in ‘Uncoupled’ teaser

A man and a woman at a bar

Neil Patrick Harris joins forces with Sex and the City and Emily in Paris creator Darren Star and Modern Family and Frasier creator Jeffrey Richman for Netflix’s upcoming series Uncoupled.

The eight-episode series follows Michael (Patrick Harris) as he navigates his husband of 17 years leaving him. Now single and with his belief in having met his soulmate shattered, Michael will navigate the dating scene in New York and learn more about himself along the way.

Uncoupled is streaming on Netflix July 29.

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This digital photo frame makes a great last-minute Mother’s Day gift — and it’s on sale

Photo frame showing of two people holding baby and white remote on table beside it

SAVE 38%: If you’re looking for a thoughtful gift for someone close to you, this Nixplay Touch Screen Digital Picture Frame is a great option. It’s on sale at Amazon for $129.99 as a deal of the day, which is down 38% from its regular price of $209.99.


Mother’s Day is now less than a week away, and you already know Mom is expecting due appreciation for her efforts in raising you. Flowers are nice and all, but they’re a little unoriginal as recompense for 18 years of heavy responsibility. Luckily, we’ve got the perfect gift for basically every Mom (and actually, every person you’re close to and have photos with, or even just share memes with).

The Nixplay 10.1 inch Touch Screen Digital Picture Frame with WiFi comes in two colors — black and light wood-patterned — and displays the photos and videos that you choose. It’s a smart frame too: It’s got features like niX-Smart Face Framing, which you can toggle off or on to recognize faces and position them closer to the center of the frame (no need to crop that group pic to just show you), niX-SenseMe, which detects when people are in the room, upon which the frame turns on to start showing pictures, and turns off when it senses no people in the room to save power, and orientation recognition, so you can turn the frame portrait or landscape and the images will rotate automatically.

You can select the pictures you want the frame to display via the Nixplay app (which is available on iOS or Android), on the desktop website, or even via email, for the more technologically challenged.Connect your app to a device and you can send media from afar, which allows for both heartwarming reminders to your loved ones of your favorite memories and also fantastic pranking opportunities. Touching a picture will heart it, so you can get a response to photos you send.

The Nixplay Digital Picture Frame also hosts several sources of input, so if you want to create a family or friend-group playlist, you can. This makes photo compilations of events super easy, and is great for celebrating shared memories (or sending memes to a group, if that’s more your thing).

On top of it all, every purchase of a Nixplay Smart Photo Frame means the company will donate tree seeds to farming families in Sub-Saharan Africa via its partner Trees for the Future. That means that you’re contributing to a good cause while also bringing joy to your favorite people: what more of a good deed could there be?

Check out the Nixplay Digital Picture Frame at Amazon, on sale for $129.99.

Black photo frame front and back showing person holding child in front

Credit: Nixplay

Nixplay 10.1 inch Touch Screen Digital Picture Frame with WiFi

$129.99 at Amazon (save 38%)

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Very good robot sidekick helped assemble a remote-controlled plane

A finished model airplane built by a human and their robot assistant.

At the University of South Carolina, a robot helped a human build a remote-controlled airplane. The upcoming study seeks to determine whether human preferences can be effectively transferred to robots in order to complete an assembly task. Using a small touchscreen tablet, the researcher is shown a list of suggested parts or actions to choose from. After making a selection, the robot then heads over to pick up the required pieces and leaves them in a drop-off zone for a smaller robot hand to pass on to the researcher

8 Dyson Airwrap dupes you can buy for under $200

a woman using a dyson airwrap to curl her hair

If you somehow predicted that a company best known for its high-end vacuums and air purifiers would also wind up making the world’s most coveted hair tool, please come collect your prize.

We’re talking, of course, about Dyson and its legendary Airwrap. Launched in 2018, the multi-functional styler has since earned a cult following for its ability to dry, smooth, and curl without the use of extreme heat. Eight different brush and barrel attachments make it suitable for a range of different hair types and textures — plus, it comes with a sleek leather case for easy storage.

No blazing-hot plates, no blistering metal rods, and no need to head to the salon for a bouncy, Cindy Crawford-worthy blowout anymore? If that all sounds too good to be true, it kind of is: The $599.99 Airwrap is even more expensive than a PlayStation 5 and just as hard to find.

Where to buy a Dyson Airwrap

The original Fuchsia/Nickel Airwrap was up for grabs on Dyson.com for a few days earlier this season, but it’s been mostly sold out there for several months now. Things are similarly dire at your big retailers; the standard Airwrap, the newer Black/Purple version, and the special-edition Prussian Blue/Rich Copper variant were all AWOL at Amazon, Best Buy, Nordstrom, Ulta, and Sephora as of May 2022. Signing up for store email alerts may help your chances of catching a restock.

Buying a pre-owned Airwrap is always an option, with some asterisks. Dyson had a refurbished Silver/Copper one listed for $499.99 in its online outlet store at the time of writing, though its usual two-year warranty was cut in half. (It’s also important to note that refurbished Dyson products are final sale and can’t be returned.) You can try eBay, Poshmark, and Facebook Marketplace for pre-owned Airwraps, but buyer beware of high markups and incomplete sets missing some or all of the attachments.

This brings us to an extremely important question: Is the Dyson Airwrap even worth the cost or the hassle? In a word, perhaps.

Our Dyson Airwrap review

We’d love to tell you that the Airwrap is an overhyped gimmick so you could save your hard-earned money, unsubscribe from all of those restock email alerts, and finally close out the Stock Informer tab that’s been pinned to your browser window for months. In fact, that’s probably going to be the case if you’re someone who doesn’t go out of the way to style their hair every single day: The Airwrap has a semi-steep learning curve, it takes up a lot of space, and at the end of the day, it just isn’t some miracle-worker for unruly tresses that can’t be tamed by other gadgets, said Mashable tech reporter Rachel Kraus.

SEE ALSO:

A new and improved Dyson Airwrap is coming out this summer

But believe it or not, there is an actual time and place for a $600 hair tool. The Airwrap is designed for use on damp hair, so if you like getting ready right after you hop out of the shower, it’ll fit effortlessly into your existing routine. If you’re worried about frying the shit out of your ends with daily styling, the Airwrap “could just be your follicles’ saving grace,” noted Kraus. And if you’re someone who frequently drops hundreds of dollars on professional blowouts, an Airwrap could actually save you money in the long run.

For her part, Kraus couldn’t justify the price of the Airwrap despite it working “really, really well” on her hair. (Click here to read her full review.) If you find yourself in a similar boat, it’s time to explore some dupes.

What is the closest thing to a Dyson Airwrap?

First, a little bit more about the Airwrap itself. According to a press release, its motor harnesses the power of an aerodynamic phenomenon called the Coanda effect. This produces a spinning vortex of warm air, which attracts and automatically wraps hair around the Airwrap’s barrel to gently dry while adding volume. All the while, an intelligent heat control system is measuring the device’s temperature over 40 times a second to ensure it never ventures beyond 302°F. (Your hair’s keratin strands typically start weakening when exposed to heat above the 300-degree mark, Dyson says.)

Dyson’s engineers perfected this technology across about 500 prototypes, so as far as the Airwrap’s design is concerned, it’s safe to say there really is no exact match or fair comparison elsewhere on the market. That being said, you may be able to get similar results out of simpler tools (with a little practice) — namely, hot air brushes and certain curling irons and straighteners.

Start your search by pinpointing the No. 1 reason why you’re drawn to the Airwrap in the first place, aside from the “minimal heat damage” thing:

  • Are you intrigued by the promise of easier at-home blowouts? Your best bet is a round hot air brush like the Drybar Double Shot or the Revlon One-Step Volumizer. (BabylissPRO has a version that rotates, which is neat.) These are great for full-bodied curls or natural waves and work best on hair that’s still slightly damp, just like the Airwrap.

  • Are you trying to get your curly hair straighter without completely flattening it? Try a hot air brush with a paddle-style head like the T3 Airebrush Duo or the Revlon One-Step Hair Dryer and Styler, which will smooth hair and minimize flyaways while still adding some volume. (These also work best on towel-dried hair.) A straightener with a built-in fan such as the L’ange Le Duo could be an option, too, though that one’s for dry hair only.

  • Are you just plain fascinated by the Airwrap’s ability to pull and twirl hair into perfect ringlets? (C’mon, it’s so cool.) Hunt down a gadget like the Beachwaver, whose spinning barrel produces tangle-free curls in seconds. Use it on completely dry hair.

Once you’ve figured out what kind of tool will get you closest to your desired results, you can further narrow your search using the following criteria:

  • Power: A styling tool’s air-blowing power is typically measured in watts. Those with higher wattage will usually produce more heat than those on the lower end, meaning they work faster but can damage hair quickly if you’re not careful. Most hot air brushes fall somewhere in the 1,000- to 2,000-watt range. (For comparison’s sake, the Airwrap’s 1,300-watt motor puts it just slightly below the average pro-quality hair dryer and makes it capable of taking tresses from wet-ish to ready in about 10 to 15 minutes.)

  • Multiple heat settings: Any styling tool that forces you to scorch your hair on “high” the whole time is a no from us. Being able to choose from a few different temperature settings makes it way easier to avoid heat damage, especially at the end of your hair routine when you’re already mostly dry. (Bonus points for any tools with a cool shot, which will seal your hair’s cuticles and set the look in place.) Keep in mind that Airwrap has three airflow speeds and four heat settings, including a constant cold shot.

  • Cord length: Professional-quality styling tools can have cords as long as 8 or 9 feet — the Airwrap’s clocks in at 8.2 feet — but you can get away with a shorter one if there’s an outlet right next to your vanity.

  • Weight: You’re going to be holding this thing above your head for a not-insignificant amount of time, so the lighter, the better. (The Airwrap weighs just over a pound, for what it’s worth.)

No matter what kind of device you wind up buying, even if it’s an actual Airwrap, consider adding some styling products to your cart while you’re at it, too. Dyson itself recommends using hairspray to “maximize curls’ longevity” and a heat protectant “whenever possible.” (It can only help.) And for extra va-va-voom volume, its Global Lead Stylist Amy Johnson suggests applying a mousse to your roots while your hair is still wet.

Below, you’ll find our guide to the best Dyson Airwrap dupes of 2022. The best part? None of them cost more than $180.

The 256GB iPad mini 6 falls to its lowest price ever of $539.99

Woman in yellow sweater outside drawing on iPad mini with Apple Pencil

Save $109.01: Upgrade to an ultra-portable tablet that packs a lot of power. The iPad mini 256GB tablet is now only $539.99 as of May 3 after a 17% price cut. This follows a recent discount of $99.01 for the entry-level 64GB iPad mini.


Apple has a little reputation for being a little pricey, but you don’t always have to wait long for decent price cuts on some of their top products. We recently saw the lowest prices yet on the 64GB iPad mini from 2021, and now you get a very nice offer if you prefer a little more storage.

Amazon now offers the 2021 iPad mini 256GB WiFi model for just $539.99 after a $109.01 discount. This is the lowest price we’ve seen so far for a tablet that was just released last fall. It beats out Best Buy’s price by $10, although at the moment you can only pick up the space gray and starlight colors at this lower price from Amazon.

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The 2021 iPad mini is the perfect tablet if you value portability most of all. With an 8.3-inch Liquid Retina display, it slips in just about any bag you own and fits right in the palm of your hand. It’s powered by the A15 Bionic chip with Neural Engine, providing enough performance for intensive processing whether editing photos and videos or playing games. And almost 10 hours of battery life is plenty of time to take care of most tasks throughout the day before it needs a rechage.

You also get a 12MP Wide back camera for high-quality photos, 4K videos, or scanning documents. It also boasts a 12MP Ultra Wide front camera with Center Stage, which adjusts the camera during FaceTime or other video apps that always knows to keep you in the frame during important calls. The iPad mini also utilizes Touch ID to unlock it or for Apple Pay. And the use of WiFi 6 ensures the fastest possible connection at any time.

The iPad mini offers a lot of power in a small package, and now it offers it at a much more reasonable price of $539.99 during this latest price cut.

iPad mini 2021 6th generation tablet in space gray

Credit: Apple

iPad mini 2021 256GB WiFi

$539.99 at Amazon (save $109.01)

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Amazon’s Echo Show 15 just went on sale for the first time ever

an echo show 15 sitting on a counter next to a yellow candle in front of a blue tile wall

SAVE $50: The Echo Show 15 is on sale for $199.99 as of May 3. That’s its first discount to date, shaving 20% off its $249.99 MSRP.


Prime Day is still a few months away — yes, we finally have a date range — but you wouldn’t know that based on all the Echo deals Amazon’s been dropping lately. From a 99-cent Echo Dot to some new all-time lows for the Echo Show 8 and second-gen Echo Buds, these are the exact kinds of can’t-miss markdowns the retail giant normally reserves for its annual shopping event.

The trend continues with the Echo Show 15, a huge new 15.6-inch smart display that Amazon just put on sale for the first time since its release last winter. As of May 3, you can get one for only $199.99 — that’s 20% off its suggested retail price of $249.99 (and a $50 savings).

SEE ALSO:

Amazon just dropped a big hint about when Prime Day will be

Designed to sit on a countertop or be mounted on a wall, the Echo Show 15 is the smart home version of a quadruple threat: It has a customizable Alexa interface with calendars, to-do lists, recipes, and a cool Sticky Notes widget, which effectively turns it into a household bulletin board. It can connect with compatible smart home devices (from cameras to speakers) to serve as a smart home hub. It has a Full HD (1080p) resolution, making it great for streaming shows and movies. And a Photo Frame feature turns it into a digital picture frame that can showcase shots from your Amazon Photos and Facebook albums. (It works in both portrait and landscape mode, too.)

All things considered, it’s a pretty massive upgrade for the Echo Show lineup. (Amazon did skip all the way from the Echo Show 10 to the 15, so that kind of tracks.) If your household has yet to embrace the whole smart home thing, this new pricing presents the perfect opportunity to do so.

an echo show 15

Credit: Amazon

Echo Show 15

$199.99 on Amazon (save $50)

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The Roborock S7, one of the best robot vacuum mop hybrids out there, gets a rare (huge) price cut

Roborock robot vacuum on rug

Save up to 47%: As a Deal of the Day on May 3, select Roborock robot vacuum mop hybrids are up to $280 off, including a $170 discount on the highly-rated Roborock S7.


Roborock’s release of the $1,399.99 S7 MaxV Ultra earlier this spring isn’t the only big news about the Roomba competitor this year. Also noteworthy is a major sale on the next-best Roborock, the S7 — a robot vacuum mop that’s still incredibly self-sufficient and deserving of a top spot in our list of best hybrid models. Its MSRP of $649.99 was already pretty decent. A 26% discount on May 3 brings it to $479.99, which is the only time the botvac has dropped below $500 outside of Black Friday in the past year.

The S7 is one of two Roborock models that’s compatible with a self-emptying dock. This technically turns it into the Roborock S7+, which is still at its retail price of $949.99. Putting the $170 saved toward the $299.99 self-emptying dock means you’re getting the full autonomous suite for $609.98 — more than $300 less than what you’d be paying buying the S7+.

On carpets and rugs, the S7’s tenacious 2500 Pa suction is tough on pet hair or crumbs that have been ground into the velcro-like fibers. On hard floors, the Roborock S7 scoops up dry debris with ease, then seals the deal with a wet scrub. (Don’t worry, hardwood owners — it’s only water.)

When Roborock’s VibraRise mop detects carpet, it cuts the water jet and lifts the wet cleaning pad to keep carpets dry. When cleaning is complete, the mop is also raised on the way back to the dock to avoid streaking. If you’re only in need of a spot scrub in a specific room, use the Roborock app to send your botvac to a specific room on the LiDAR map it created of your home. Here, you can also designate virtual no-go zones.

Looking for a more budget-friendly choice? Another LiDAR-equipped Roborock hybrid, the S6 Pure, is 47% off at $319.99, while the non-mopping Roborock E4 is 47% off at $159.99.

Roborock robot vacuum with smartphone on red Roborock screen

Credit: Roborock

Roborock S7 Robot Vacuum Mop Hybrid

$479.99 (save $170)

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‘Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness’ spoiler-free review: What do critics think?

A girl in a jean jacket and two men in cloaks stand in a hallway.

The Marvel Cinematic Universe just got Raimi-ed.

That’s the general consensus driving reviews of Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, directed by Spider-Man, The Evil Dead, and Drag Me To Hell director Sam Raimi. Raimi’s propensity for horror and strangeness is in full display in Marvel’s latest, which sees Doctor Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) hopping through the multiverse in order to protect the powerful yet untrained America Chavez (Xochitl Gomez).

According to critics, Multiverse of Madness has a lot going for it: a (mostly) distinct style, some of Marvel’s most gonzo fight scenes yet, and fan service with a cheeky twist. It certainly isn’t perfect, suffering from clunky exposition, MacGuffins galore, and the ever-present need to slot neatly into the MCU’s master plan. But overall, critics praised the film (and Raimi) for trying its best to think outside the box.

Here’s what critics are saying about Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness.

Sam Raimi brings his signature style to the MCU

A cloaked man surrounded by glowing red orbs.

Things are about to get a little… Strange.
Credit: Marvel Studios 2022

Mashable, Kristy Puchko

Does Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness deliver sky fights, superhero spectacle, fan service cameos, and a soaring score? You betcha. But it does all this through a Raimi lens that is more violent, more cornball, and much, much grosser than the MCU has dared go before. This is Raimi’s most Raimi superhero movie yet, playing like Spider-Man versus The Evil Dead 2.

SlashFilm, Hoai-Tran Bui

Raimi and all of his campy, cheesy quirks can’t help but pop to the surface. The result is a horror-tinged trip that is as macabre and gnarly as Marvel has ever been, and as muted as Raimi has ever been. But even at his most muted, Raimi gives us one hell of a ride.

IndieWire, David Ehrlich

Raimi starts transforming this super-sized episode of What If? into a carnival of souls complete with legitimate (if gentle) jump-scares, a wild take on the house of mirrors, flourishes of unsettling body horror, Benedict Wong kicking all sorts of ass, and a camera that is ready to be attached to anything at any time so long as it’s moving really fast.

IGN, Amelia Emberwing

Raimi’s full range of weirdness and spookiness is on full display from start to finish here. Whether it’s through the creatures, Raimi-specific cameos, or just the vibe, fans familiar with his filmography are going to be able to call out plenty of moments bearing Raimi’s signature.

Multiverse of Madness is deliciously violent (thanks, Raimi)

A woman, a man, and a girl stand in a doorway.

Behold, the multiverse.
Credit: Marvel Studios 2022

Mashable, Kristy Puchko

What Raimi brings to the table is unabashed grossness. Forget the glossiness of Cosmic Marvel. From the first monster to attack on Manhattan, there is glop in this movie. Tentacles dripping with ooze is just the beginning. There will be blood. There will be gore. There will be so much of it that you might well wonder how Marvel Entertainment managed to get a PG-13 rating from the MPAA.

SlashFilm, Hoai-Tran Bui

The way that Raimi’s influence most obviously exerts itself is in the surprising brutality of Multiverse of Madness. Marvel has often cut away from violence in favor of a more sanitized view of superheroes, but Multiverse of Madness flirts with horror in a manner that gives us some of our goriest deaths yet.

All hail Elizabeth Olsen as Scarlet Witch

A woman in a red cloak sits, floating, in a circle of candles.

Wanda, what are you doing?
Credit: Marvel Studios 2022

SlashFilm, Hoai-Tran Bui

Olsen runs away with the film in her tortured, grief-stricken depiction of Wanda’s downward spiral as she’s driven to terrible deeds in the name of her children.

Los Angeles Times, Justin Chang

Building on the stealth emotionalism of her WandaVision arc, Olsen does possibly her most impressive work since her stellar debut in the 2011 independent drama Martha Marcy May Marlene.

Variety, Owen Gleiberman

Olsen’s performance generates an operatic fire even as she’s styled like a barefoot mom soaked in Carrie White’s blood.

A fun mess hampered by multiverse exhaustion

A glowing book on an ornate floating platform.

How much multiverse is too much multiverse?
Credit: Marvel Studios 2022

Variety, Owen Gleiberman

Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness is a ride, a head trip, a CGI horror jam, a what-is-reality Marvel brainteaser and, at moments, a bit of an ordeal. It’s a somewhat engaging mess, but a mess all the same.

The Hollywood Reporter, John Defore 

Three of Marvel’s biggest recent features (including one of its best, Into the Spider-Verse) are built entirely upon hopping between parallel universes; throw in similar ideas like time machines that cause splintering timelines, and the conceit starts to look like a franchise-sustaining crutch.

The Verge, Charles Pulliam-Moore

Unlike No Way Home, though, where the multiverse was framed as being more like part of the landscape its heroes had to navigate, Multiverse of Madness treats the concept like a plot device meant to move its story forward.

Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness is in theaters May 6.

Facebook ads have a problem. It’s called digital redlining.

A broken Facebook logo

In 2021, a Facebook user filed a lawsuit because they didn’t think they were getting a fair shot at viewing advertisements. Wanting to see ads might seem absurd — if you’re anything like me, you want ads off your social media experience at all costs. Still, to a 55-year-old prospective tenant in the Washington, D.C. area, it was about more than a simple publicity blurb on Facebook. It, the plaintiff argued, had grave real-life consequences.

So Neuhtah Opiotennione filed a class-action lawsuit against nine companies that manage various apartment buildings in the D.C. area, alleging that they engaged in “digital housing discrimination” by excluding older people — like her — from viewing advertisements on Facebook. She alleges that because the defendants deliberately excluded people over the age of 50 from viewing their ads — something you could once do on Facebook — she was denied the opportunity to receive certain housing advertisements targeted to younger potential tenants.

“In creating a targeted Facebook advertisement, advertisers can determine who sees their advertisements based on such characteristics as age, gender, location, and preferences,” the lawsuit reads. The plaintiff alleged that rental companies used Facebook’s targeting function to exclude people like her because of her age, instead directing the ads to younger prospective tenants.

David Brody, counsel and senior fellow for privacy and technology at the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, which filed a brief in favor of the plaintiff, said in a press release that “Facebook is not giving the user what the user wants – Facebook is giving the user what it thinks a demographic stereotype wants. Redlining is discriminatory and unjust whether it takes place online or offline, and we must not allow corporations to blame technology for harmful decisions made by CEOs.”

The case was ultimately dismissed because the judge felt that online targeting of advertisements causes no injury to consumers. However, Ballard Spahr LLP, a law firm that focuses on litigation, securities and regulatory enforcement, business and finance, intellectual property, public finance, and real estate matters, said that the ruling could have a significant impact on how we view discrimination online.

“It seems likely to make it more difficult for private parties to attempt to bring lawsuits related to online ad targeting on social media networks or through methods like paid search,” the firm said. “But, secondarily, we wonder whether it will serve as a barrier to regulatory actions as well.”

Opiotennione v. Bozzuto Mgmt. is just one of many lawsuits against Facebook alleging discrimination. We already know how nefarious these ads can be, from spying on us to collecting our data and creating a world with further devastating partisan divides. But there’s something else harmful going on with ads online, particularly on one of the largest ad platforms ever, Facebook. According to Facebook’s parent company, Meta, the platform has a total advertising audience of more than two billion people. Any one of them could be missing out on ads — for housing, credit opportunities, and other important issues that impact the wealth gap — due to digital redlining. Here’s why that’s important.

Wait, what is digital redlining?

Traditional redlining is when people and companies purposefully withhold loans and other resources from people who live in specific neighborhoods. This tends to land along racial and financial divides, and it works to deepen those divides. It can happen online, too.

Digital redlining refers to any use of technology to perpetuate discrimination. It’s how The Greenlining Institute, a California-based organization that works to fix digital redlining, describes the practice of internet companies failing to provide infrastructures for service — such as broadband internet — to lower-income communities, as it’s seen as less profitable to do so.

That kind of digital redlining results in lower-income people having to turn to prepaid plans and other more expensive options for internet while also having to deal with slower speeds than those in wealthier — and often whiter — communities, which have a digital infrastructure. The Greenlining Institute isn’t the only organization working to fix this kind of digital redlining. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is also forming an agency task force focused on combating digital discrimination and promoting equal broadband access nationwide.

But digital redlining also refers to unfair ad-targeting practices. According to the ACLU, online ad-targeting can replicate existing disparities in society, which can exclude people who belong to historically marginalized groups from opportunities for housing, jobs, and credit. 

“In today’s digital world, digital redlining has become the new frontier of discrimination, as social media platforms like Facebook and online advertisers have increasingly used personal data to target ads based on race, gender, and other protected traits,” the ACLU said in a press release from January. “This type of online discrimination is harmful and disproportionately impacts people of color, women, and other marginalized groups, yet courts have held that platforms like Facebook and online advertisers can’t be held accountable for withholding ads for jobs, housing, and credit from certain users. Despite agreements to make sweeping changes to its ad platform, digital redlining still persists on Facebook.”

It’s not that digital redlining is more harmful on Facebook than it is on other online platforms, but, as Galen Sherwin, a senior staff attorney with the ACLU Women’s Rights Project, told Mashable, it’s “more prevalent in that Facebook is an industry leader and has such a huge market share here in this space.” Facebook says its algorithm treats everyone equally and the fault lies with its advertisers — advertisers that pay Facebook, and where the majority of its money is made.

“The fact that Facebook has offered these tools that not just permit, but invite advertisers to exclude users based on certain characteristics, including their membership and protected classes is tremendously harmful,” Sherwin said. “And even though there have been some steps to mitigate those harms and to remove the worst or most blatant of the ways in which the platform can operate that way in the housing, employment and credit space, there’s still a really long way to go before that’s eradicated truly from the space.”

Many activists agree that while Facebook has made moves to resolve its ad discrimination problems since a 2016 report from ProPublica, not enough has been done. 

How does digital redlining work?

Let’s say a realtor group wants to only share ads for their homes with wealthy, upper-class people who live in upper-class neighborhoods and exist within upper-class communities, or a restaurant wants to only share ads for an upcoming job opening to specific candidates. When that company chooses a platform like Google or Facebook to push out those ads, it will look for ways to siphon its ad coverage to those specifically targeted groups. Targeting tools on those platforms allow companies to choose who can and cannot see their ads. On Facebook, users can take two general approaches to creating a target audience: specific and broad. Specific targeting can lead to a potential audience that’s smaller, like parents living in Tucson, Arizona, while broad targeting includes categories like gender and age. 

After many court-based struggles (we’ll get to that shortly), housing, employment, and credit have been deemed special ad categories. That means they have restricted targeting options in their ads manager. A company looking to place ads for housing, employment, or credit can still target an advertisement to a specific audience instead of just sending it out widely. Still, they can’t do it based on protected characteristics, such as age, gender, and where the potential consumers live. At least, that’s the goal.

Facebook wrote in 2019 that “these ads will not allow targeting by age, gender, zip code, multicultural affinity, or any detailed options describing or appearing to relate to protected characteristics,” like race, sex, religion, national origin, physical disability, or sexual orientation and gender identity. Advertisers for these protected classes can also not use lookalike audiences, a way to reach new people likely to be interested in a business because they are similar to that businesses’ existing customers.

But is that enough?

Morgan Williams, the general counsel of the National Fair Housing Alliance, told Mashable that there are other aspects of Facebook’s platform that cause scrutiny and concern, despite the work Facebook has done. Research from October 2021 pulled from public voting records in North Carolina analyzed the impacts of Facebook’s advertisements and found that it has discriminatory outcomes.

“This was true for both the Lookalike Audience tool and the Special Ad Audience tool that Facebook designed to explicitly not use sensitive demographic attributes when finding similar users,” the report read.

“If you were to provide Facebook with a set of names of contacts, [like] your client list, it would then target ads to Facebook users that were of a similar profile as your client list. And in engaging in that targeting, there were certain interest metrics that were specifically concerning, and that, from our perspective, would have segregated targeting of those ads,” Williams said. “In our settlement, we agreed to remove a number of those interest factors and simply allow Facebook to proceed with targeting on the basis of [things like] internet usage, but we still have concerns about this.”

Advertisers on Facebook trying to reach audiences in the U.S. with housing, employment, or credit ads can’t use the lookalike feature, but they can create a special ad audience. That’s an audience based on online behavior similarities that doesn’t consider things like age, gender, or zip code. But activists argue there might be some shady ways untrustworthy users can target protected traits within a special ad audience, too. For example, you can create a custom audience target by using sources like customer lists, website or app traffic, or engagement on Facebook. 

Special ad audiences allow advertisers to give Facebook a seed audience, and then Facebook selects other Facebook users who look like that seed audience. So, advertisers aren’t saying “show this ad to 27 year old queer people who live in Brooklyn,” they’re saying “show this to people like Christianna Silva” — and Christianna Silva happens to be a 27-year-old queer person living in Brooklyn.


Obviously, if your seed audience reflect a certain demographic, the matching audience will also reflect that demographic.

“Obviously, if your seed audience reflect a certain demographic, the matching audience will also reflect that demographic,” Sherwin said. “And while Facebook made some changes to that tool, it did not make significant enough changes and there have been studies since then that demonstrate that, essentially, the patterns of discriminatory output are unchanged.”

Facebook’s ad-delivery algorithm then chooses which users matching those criteria will actually see the ads based on predictions relying on a bunch of user data about who they are, where they live, what they like or post, and what groups they join. While this may seem harmless, it can lead to discrimination because data about who we are, where we live, what we live and post, and what groups we join are indicative of our protected traits.

Is this legal? 

To be clear, targeting ads based on protected traits is illegal. Despite this, a 2021 study of discrimination in job ad delivery on Facebook and LinkedIn conducted by independent researchers at the University of Southern California found that Facebook’s ad-delivery system showed different employment ads to women and men, even though the jobs require the same qualifications and the targeting parameters chosen by the advertiser included all genders. This is illegal, but there’s confusion about how Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which is designed to shield platforms from liability for content that users post, and other civil rights laws apply to online ad targeting.

Sherwin, the senior staff attorney with the ACLU Women’s Rights Project, told Mashable that Facebook has been hiding behind Section 230 in its litigation. And while the ACLU mostly supports Section 230 and the protections it allows platforms, their position here is that “it doesn’t protect Facebook from this conduct because Facebook itself was the architect of the targeting tools.”

Changes have been made

To its credit, Facebook has made sweeping changes to its ad-delivery system.

A spokesperson for Meta told Mashable that Facebook has made “significant investments” to help prevent discrimination on their ad platforms. The spokesperson’s example was that its terms and advertising policies have “long emphasized” that advertisers cannot use their platform to engage in wrongful discrimination. That feels like a pretty weak point, considering that many may not read the terms and conditions. And, of course, it’s not so much a question of if the user reads the terms as it is whether or not Facebook is policing the rules in it own terms. Facebook says it is, but the platform is famously terrible at policing its own rules — just consider the way misinformation continues to spread on the platform.

Advertisers also can’t use interests, demographics, or behaviors for exclusion targeting. Since advertisers self-report on whether they’re posting ads about jobs and housing and the like, (obviously not a foolproof system), Facebook also uses human reviewers and machine-learning algorithms to identify the ads in case they are incorrectly identified. Meta hasn’t disclosed how well this actually works.

In the U.S., Canada, and the EU, people running housing, employment, or credit ads have to use special advertisement categories with restricted targeting options, including that they aren’t allowed to target by gender, age, or zip code, and must instead target a minimum 15-mile radius from a specific location, the Meta spokesperson said. But Facebook still gives housing providers the ability to target potential renters or homeowners by a radius of a certain place — which, according to the ACLU, is “a clear proxy for race in our still-segregated country.” 

Are those changes enough?

The courts have forced Facebook to make plenty of changes. But many activists argue that the steps they’ve taken so far have been far too incremental.

In March 2019, Facebook disabled a feature for housing, credit, and job ads after settling several lawsuits, but algorithms still showed ads to statistically distinct demographic groups even following the move. For instance, one 2021 study showed that a Domino’s pizza ad was shown to more men than women, while an ad for the grocery delivery and pick-up service Instacart was shown to more women than men. The same audit also found that employment advertisements for sales associates for cars on Facebook were shown to more men than women, while more women than men were shown ads for sales associates for jewelry on Facebook.

In one lawsuit, which was dismissed, prospective tenants alleged that Facebook’s advertising platform excluded them from receiving housing advertisements because of their protected characteristics.

“While ad classification will never be perfect, we’re always improving our systems to improve our detection and enforcement over time,” the Meta spokesperson said. 

In January 2022, Facebook began removing more targeting options related to topics people may perceive as sensitive, such as options referencing causes, organizations, or public figures that relate to health, race or ethnicity, political affiliation, religion, or sexual orientation. That’s because you can make some assumptions about protected classes based upon which political affiliation, religion, or sexual orientation topics they “like” on Facebook. This is for all types of ads, according to the Meta spokesperson. Facebook also built a section of its Ad Library that allows users in the U.S. and Canada to search for all active housing, employment, and credit opportunity ads by advertisers and the location they’re targeted to, regardless of whether they’re in the advertiser’s intended audience.


Until Facebook’s appetite changes, much of the work lands upon the shoulders of activists and lawmakers.

“I think making the housing and employment opportunities searchable through the marketplace was one step forward,” Sherwin said. “That takes it out of the advertiser’s hands and puts some control in the hands of the user to affirmatively seek out opportunities rather than relying passively on the Facebook feed.”

Sherwin said it’s an “important step,” but acknowledged that Facebook hasn’t shown “any real appetite to crack the ad delivery algorithm.” After all, advertising income is the bulk of Facebook’s revenue. In 2021, the company made $29 billion through ad sales in the three months ending in June.

Until Facebook’s appetite changes, much of the work lands upon the shoulders of activists and lawmakers. But, hey, we can always delete our profiles.