As the U.S. election season trudges forward, Facebook announced it will allow politicians and political groups to pay for sponsored content on the platform, Reuters reported Friday.

This means that politicians can pay users, groups, or pages to post content in partnership with the politicians, which is a separate beast from standard advertising. The decision form Facebook comes after Mike Bloomberg, who is vying to be the Democratic candidate in 2020’s presidential election, began a campaign of branded content on Instagram, paying popular accounts to promote his campaign.

Content creators on Facebook will now be able to tag if a post is sponsored by a politician more easily. In order to pay for sponsored content, politicians and political groups will have to be authorized to do so by Facebook. Read more…

More about Facebook, Tech, Big Tech Companies, and Politics

After three months of digging, Elon Musk’s Boring Company has completed its excavation of a transportation tunnel beneath the Las Vegas Convention Center, the company tweeted Friday.

The Boring Company retweeted a video from the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority account that shows an excavator breaking through the ground at the end of tunnel, which will ferry people around the sprawling convention center. At the end of the project, the tunnel is supposed to transport up to 4,400 people per hour without causing any noise or vibration on the surface, the company claimed back in May. Read more…

More about Las Vegas, The Boring Company, Tech, Transportation, and Elon Musk

This year Mashable is celebrating the season of love with Horny on Main, an exploration of the many ways that thirsting for sex affects our lives.

Is there anything more delightfully horny than reality television? 

I used to call reality TV my guilty pleasure, but I don’t pretend that I’m ashamed anymore. I’m a proud defendant of overproduced, alcohol-drenched trash shows. They’re loud, dramatic for no good reason, and rarely follow a cohesive storyline. Still, they’re so much fun to watch. The most enjoyable part of the show is never the plot, but the sheer desire embedded in each and every episodeThat’s the human condition, baby.  Read more…

More about Reality Tv, Rankings, Horny On Main, Culture, and Movies Tv Shows

Just like that, rickrolling is an official piece of the Fortnite experience.

There’s a new emote in the Fortnite item shop called “Never Gonna.” If the name wasn’t enough of a giveaway, the $5 buy is indeed Rick Astley’s dorky white dude dance from his seminal (for internet trolling, at least) 1987 hit single, “Never Gonna Give You Up.”

The British pop star even gave the emote his personal seal of approval in the only place that really matters, Twitter. (Sound up, folks. It’s not a rickroll if you already know it’s coming.)

More about Rick Astley, Rickrolling, Fortnite, Entertainment, and Gaming

Popular messaging app ToTok has been pulled from the Google Play Store … again. According to 9to5Google, Google removed the app as of Friday afternoon after reinstating it in January.

ToTok originally launched in July and took off rather quickly in the Unite Arab Emirates. With messaging apps like WhatsApp and Skype being blocked in the Middle Eastern country, ToTok seemed like the next best option. Eventually, it even became popular around the world.

But only a few months later it was removed from both the iOS App Store and the Google Play Store. As 9to5Google notes, Play Store claimed the removal happened because ToTok violated its policies. But there wasn’t any more detail than that. Read more…

More about United Arab Emirates, Messaging Apps, Surveillance Monitor, Totok, and Tech

This year Mashable is celebrating the season of love with Horny on Main, an exploration of the many ways that thirsting for sex affects our lives.  

If we hear the word “horny” one more time…

We don’t know about you, reader, but we get tired of saying the word horny. No, not tired of being horny. We’re just tired of using the same term over and over again. There’s gotta be more than just “horny.”

Luckily, there are at least 69 other ways to get the same message across. We compiled a list, including slang you may or may not have heard before, GIFs, emoji, and even a few options from the dictionary (because nothing sets the mood like saying “Oh baby, I’m so libidinous.”). Take a look and choose the one that feels right for the moment.  Read more…

More about Slang, 69, Horny, Culture, and Sex Relationships

In our Love App-tually series, Mashable shines a light into the foggy world of online dating. It is cuffing season after all.

It’s almost become unusual for people to not meet their partner online. That wasn’t always the case. 

Twenty-nine percent of heterosexual and 65 percent of same-sex couples meet online. Over 20 billion matches have been made since Tinder launched in 2012.

But when Match.com, one of the first mainstream dating sites, was founded in 1993, it was taboo to talk about online dating. And that stigma, which we’ve since shorn as a dating public, lasted for years. 

We took a trip through time and spoke to couples who met on Match roughly two decades ago. They opened up about the stigma, their love stories, and challenges they had to overcome. Here are their stories.  Read more…

More about Relationships, Online Dating, Marriage, Marriages, and Love App Tually

Warning: Contains spoilers for Bojack Horseman‘s final season.

Bojack Horseman is a show that goes all in on the details.

Each frame is packed full of so many tiny in-jokes and background puns that it feels like you could watch the entire series several times over, and still keep seeing things you missed.

The Season 6 whiteboard sequence is the perfect example of this. 

To recap, in Season 6, Episode 11, Diane, Todd, and Princess Carolyn attempt to work out why Bojack is being investigated by two reporters. Their method? Writing down every bad thing he’s done on a huge whiteboard.

More about Bojack Horseman, Bojack Horseman Season 6, Entertainment, and Movies Tv Shows

It’s Valentine’s Day and Jack Dorsey is tweeting about wine. 

Or, more precisely, he tweeted a screenshot of a WikiHow article telling people how to properly hold a wine glass. Whatever you do, insists the article with an accompanying picture of a solitary hand holding a glass of wine, “Never hold the bowl.” It’s real depressing shit. 

The Twitter CEO shared the image late Friday afternoon after, we’re assuming, his date told him to stop being such a pretentious jerk and just enjoy the nice bottle of Priorat for crying out loud. 

More about Twitter, Jack Dorsey, Wine, Tech, and Big Tech Companies

Smart speakers are creepy recording devices that eavesdrop on unsuspecting people. A new piece of custom technology offers the chance to fight back. 

Stylized as a cyberpunk bracelet, a “wearable jammer” was developed by a trio of professors at the University of Chicago. In addition to looking punk rock as all hell, the device emits ultrasonic noise that interferes with microphones’ ability to record yet is inaudible to humans. 

Oh, and the professors — Ben Zhao, Heather Zheng, and assistant professor Pedro Lopes — published schematics online so the more technically proficient of you can make one at home.  Read more…

More about Privacy, Smart Speakers, Tech, and Other