The Markup
@themarkup
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Challenging technology to serve the public good. Send tips: https://t.co/yv1m5SzbDP. Subscribe: https://t.co/t3INg1q8dS. Support: https://t.co/Ps92EHohDT. Bluesky: https://t.co/dxoOXljZbD
New York, NY
Joined September 2018
NEW DATA: Schools censor much of the web—and the practice is inhibiting students’ learning and even safety. The Trevor Project? Blocked. Planned Parenthood? Blocked. NASA? Blocked. With @USATODAY:
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But there were huge differences. Gmail sent 63 percent of @PeteButtigieg's campaign email to the primary inbox. But it sent none of @ewarren's campaign email there. And only 2 percent of @BernieSanders's campaign email landed in the primary inbox.
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NEW: Some of the country’s top hospitals have been sending sensitive patient information to Facebook. These hospitals may have violated HIPAA, experts say.
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New: We analyzed Trump and Biden Facebook ads and found Facebook charged Biden more than it charged Trump on average. The gap was especially wide for ads targeted to swing-state voters in July and August, when Biden paid, on average, double Trump's rate.
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Thread🧵.Email is a political battleground. Candidates work hard to spit-polish messages that will raise money and turn out the vote. But Gmail’s black box sorting algorithm sends many political messages to a separate tab that users may rarely check.📭.
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#NEW: Lenders are more likely to deny home loans to people of color than White people with similar financial backgrounds. Black people were 80% more likely to be denied, @eh_mah_nwel and @lkirchner reveal in their latest investigation.
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Welcome to The Markup. We are a new nonprofit newsroom that will produce meaningful data-centered journalism investigating the societal harms of technology.
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NEW: The New York City government’s chatbot is telling businesses to break labor and housing law. With @THECITYNY, @Documentedny:
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NEWS: @SenWarren, @RepKatiePorter, and more demand tax filing companies and Big Tech give answers about their tracking of taxpayers’ info. “An appalling breach of users’ trust and a potentially illegal misuse of sensitive taxpayer data,” they call it:
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BREAKING: A congressional report has confirmed that Meta and major tax preparation companies inappropriately shared millions of taxpayers’ financial data. “Shockingly careless” is how the investigation, led by @SenWarren, described it.
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For example, Google Ads blocks ad targeting with “Black power,” a phrase associated with the African American civil rights movement, but offered more than 100 million YouTube videos and channels related to the White supremacist phrase “White power.”
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In our test, we opened a new Gmail account using a new phone number and Tor, an anonymizing browser. We did not open, move, or label the emails in the inbox.
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We want to share a long-overdue update on the status of The Markup. We are thrilled to announce that Julia Angwin @JuliaAngwin is back as Editor-in-Chief, and former BuzzFeed VP and associate counsel Nabiha Syed @nabihasyed is joining as President.
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NEW: Code on the FAFSA website sent financial aid applicants’ personal data to Facebook. The U.S. Department of Education turned off the feature following our questioning, but the data that was shared remains in Facebook’s hands.
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We tested to see if Gmail’s algorithm sorted all the presidential candidates’ email the same way —and we found it did not.
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We’re live! Welcome to The Markup! We are so excited to show you a couple of the things we’ve been working on. Take a look around:
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NEW report confirms that crime prediction software can’t deliver on its claim to fame: predicting crime. The tech that tells police where to patrol was right less than 1% of the time. With @WIRED:.
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NEW: Major tax filing companies, like H&R Block and TaxAct, have been sending your information to Facebook as you file your taxes online. The penalties for disclosing data without consent could be steep.
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When we brought our findings to Google, the company doubled down: It blocked an additional 32 terms related to social and racial justice, including “civil rights,” “believe Black women,” “Black excellence,” and “queer.”.
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Our investigation uncovered that Google Ads blocks dozens of terms associated with social and racial justice movements. Meanwhile, hundreds of millions of videos the platform suggested for hate-related terms were available for ad placements.
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🧵🧵🧵.1/ The Markup is all about algorithmic accountability. So, for our first story we investigated an algorithm that sets prices for a product you need for everyday life and you MUST purchase or you can land in jail. It’s car insurance. 🚙📈
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Domingo, a Los Angeles–based Uber driver was just one ride away from a $100 bonus. That’s when he got stuck waiting for Uber’s algorithm to give him another ride. This wasn’t bad luck—it was an engineered outcome, explains @veenadubal:.
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Today we’re thrilled to announce that @sisiwei will be joining our team as editor-in-chief. Sisi Wei brings more than a decade of experience in investigative, data, and visual journalism to this role. Join us in welcoming her!.
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When we clicked a button to schedule an appointment at the following hospitals, Facebook was sent a packet of data that included details like our IP addresses, selected doctors’ names, and more.
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NEW: A secretive scoring system helps determine which of Los Angeles’s unhoused residents get assistance by measuring their “vulnerability.”. We reviewed more than 130,000 scores and found racial disparities in who’s deemed most vulnerable. With @latimes:
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We signed up for emails from 16 presidential campaigns. After four months, only 6 percent of candidates’ emails appeared in our primary inbox. The majority went to the promotions inbox. #WheresMyEmail
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Even data from password-protected patient portals made its way into Facebook’s hands. We found seven health systems sending data as sensitive as medication names, appointment details, and descriptions of allergic reactions. Most have since removed the tracking.
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And when we logged in to one of these patient portals ourselves, we found Facebook got even more sensitive information—including a medication’s name and dosage as well as the response to a question about sexual orientation.
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NEW: We’ve identified one of the largest suppliers of data to the location data industry—family safety app Life360. Life360 sells location data from its 33 million users to about a dozen data brokers, including X-Mode, Safegraph, and Cuebiq.
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Set a reminder. Mark your calendars. Turn post notifications on. The Markup launches on Feb. 25 with nonprofit, nonpartisan, data-driven investigations. Yeah, we’re excited, too.
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UPDATE: A class action lawsuit alleges that Meta has been collecting patients’ sensitive health data without their consent, citing our findings.
NEW: Some of the country’s top hospitals have been sending sensitive patient information to Facebook. These hospitals may have violated HIPAA, experts say.
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In a rare look at just how deep (and weird) the rabbit hole of targeted advertising gets, we found 650,000 ways the digital ad industry labels you. And we’ve made it easy for you to explore the data:
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As we reported yesterday, Google responded to our investigation by changing the platform’s code to preclude future investigations. It is now unclear whether a keyword is blocked or there are simply no related videos on YouTube.
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Google told us: “Mail classifications automatically adjust to match users’ preferences and actions.”.
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We are small but growing. We are @JuliaAngwin @thejefflarson @suepgardner @k4_713 @SuryaMattu @lkirchner @tenuous @k4_713. We’ll be hiring soon. Check back soon for job postings:
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Our team poses lots of questions before jumping on to any social platform. Mastodon was no outlier.
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Citizen Browser is a new project that seeks to audit the black box algorithms that determine what users see on their social media feeds. Read more on this exciting project in today’s newsletter: (video via @knightcolumbia)
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This data was sent to Facebook by the Meta Pixel. It’s a snippet of code people can put on their websites that tracks users as they navigate the site, potentially logging the pages they visit, the buttons they click, and some information they enter into forms.
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Facebook’s advertising machinery is seemingly everywhere across the web. Including on sites where you’re doing something as personal as booking a doctor’s appointment. Read the full report from @toddfeathers, @varlogsimon, @angiewaller, @suryamattu now.
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Across Kansas City, @ATT gave the worst deals to historically redlined areas. We found the same pattern in every city in our analysis where digitized historic redlining maps were available—22 in all.
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Five of those seven hospitals showed up in the data from our reader-powered study with @MozillaRally. The hospitals were sending their patients’—and our participants’—medical data to Facebook. Learn more about the project:
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A decade ago, a group of UCLA professors developed software that used data to predict where crime would happen, promising police could thwart it. PredPol, as they called it, was supposed to be race neutral. We and @Gizmodo found its predictions are not.
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Still, reporting has shown time and again that Facebook’s filters can let seriously sensitive data slip through the cracks. And the data sharing likely goes far beyond the 40 institutions we’ve identified.
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We found Google Ads blocked ad placement searches for Black Lives Matter, Muslim and Jewish parenting, Muslim fashion, and issues involving gender and sexuality. After we contacted the company, it extended blocks to other religions.
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Parents, please check your kids’ candy this Halloween. We just found the Facebook Pixel tracking us from inside a Snickers bar. It’s everywhere.
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For a deeper look at precisely how @leonyin popped the hood on Google Ads, read the methodology here. Warning: This methodology contains many offensive terms.
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Why can internet providers charge the same for totally different speeds?. The federal government doesn’t regulate these prices. Unlike telephone service, it doesn’t consider internet to be a utility. 😳 . The @FCC declined to comment. Read the full story:
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We’re thrilled to announce that the exceptional @iamxavier is joining @team_markup as an explanatory reporter. Last year, his video about why black actors in Insecure look stunning on screen took the internet by storm:.
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New from @asankin: Facebook allowed advertisers to target more than 78 million users interested in “pseudoscience,” even as the company vowed to fight misinformation. It took down the category after an inquiry from The Markup.
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NEW with @statnews: Major telehealth companies specializing in mental health, addiction, and more are collecting sensitive patient data and sending it to the world’s largest advertising platforms.
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We analyzed more than 800,000 internet offers from @ATT, @Verizon, @EarthLink, and @CenturyLink in 38 U.S. cities. All four regularly offered speeds at or above 200 Mbps in some neighborhoods and connections below 25 Mbps in others. For the exact. Same. Price.
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NEW: We’ve identified a private equity firm that has unseen influence on children’s education. Vista Equity Partners owns companies like PowerSchool and EAB, which are collecting and using data on tens of millions of students.
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In response to our findings, a Meta spokesperson paraphrased the company’s sensitive health policy, saying that if Facebook detects potentially sensitive data being sent, it “will be removed before it can be stored in our ads systems.” They didn’t respond to follow-up questions.
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NEW: Non-native English speakers’ assignments are more frequently flagged as AI-generated, a report has revealed. As the fall semester begins, faculty should consider whether the research makes a case for scrapping AI detectors altogether.
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New investigation: We found Google routinely put its own products before competitors on the search page. In a sample of 15,000 queries, Google content took up 41 percent of the first page and 63 percent of the first screen of search results.
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People offered the worst internet deals aren’t just being ripped off. They’re being denied the ability to participate in remote learning, well-paying remote jobs, and even family connection and recreation.
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The Meta Pixel can track:.• what pages you view.• what you buy.• what you enter into a form.• what you click. We found it on extremely sensitive sites—and we’re still seeing companies being held accountable.
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Amazon doesn’t consistently disclose which products are company brands or exclusives. So this Cyber Monday, we decided to add some transparency for Amazon shoppers. Introducing: Amazon Brand Detector.
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In our experiment, Gmail sent 63 percent of Pete Buttigieg’s campaign email to the primary inbox. But it sent none of Elizabeth Warren’s campaign email there. And only 2 percent of Bernie Sanders’s campaign email landed in the primary inbox.:
We tested to see if Gmail’s algorithm sorted all the presidential candidates’ email the same way —and we found it did not.
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NEW: Amazon placed items from its house brands and exclusives ahead of competitors with better customer ratings and more sales, @adrjeffries and @leonyin found after examining the results of nearly 3,500 popular product searches.
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Few people are aware of how expansively Facebook tracks users when they are not on Facebook—whether they’re Facebook users or not. If you are a @Firefox user, you can help us uncover what information Facebook’s pixel tool is gathering about you.
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NEW: Dozens of websites tied to the national mental health crisis hotline—988—are sending visitor data to Facebook. That data often included whether visitors attempted to call the hotline by clicking on designated dial buttons. With @statnews:.
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. @benandjerrys, a company with a history of publicly supporting social and racial justice movements, expressed concern about the blocklist, saying it’s like working “with one arm tied behind our back.”.
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UPDATE: Uber offered a $1,000 payment to one of these carjacked drivers—in exchange for an NDA. The driver would've been promising not to sue Uber, disparage the company, or talk about the settlement.
NEW: Uber and Lyft drivers across the U.S. have been carjacked at alarming rates over the past year and a half. Many of these workers are elderly, immigrants, or women. Eleven have died as a result, and dozens have been severely or permanently injured.
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Today we’re sending out the first issue of our newsletter. Funny story: it turns out it is NOT THAT EASY to find a newsletter platform that lets you totally disable tracking. /1
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UPDATE: Mental health startup Cerebral has admitted to disclosing users’ sensitive health data in violation of HIPAA. We and @statnews uncovered the data sharing back in December.
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We're happy to start the new decade off with an amazing team in place and important stories to tell. Wishing you all a productive and positive 2020. Sign up for our newsletter:
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Since we launched Blacklight this morning, readers have scanned 36,000 sites for trackers. (And true to our tracker-free promise, we don't know who you are.) . Try Blacklight for yourself:
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Read this sentence twice: Exit polls showed that 40% of those who voted to pass California’s Prop 22 believed they were supporting gig workers in getting a living wage. The tactics that led to this belief are already being employed in Massachusetts.
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These keyword blocklists could affect the advertising income of YouTube creators who focus on social justice issues like Black Lives Matter.
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🚨Job alert🚨.The Markup is hiring! Applications are open for an editor, beat reporters, chief of staff and a tech coordinator. ⬇️ More info in the thread .✉️ DMs open if you have questions.🔗 Please share with your networks.
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We’re thrilled to share this news: @lamthuyvo will be joining our team as a reporter. Lam brings expertise in data analysis and on-the-ground reporting, as well as a commitment to revealing how systems impact those living on the margins.
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In Kenosha, Wisconsin, 43% of Black ninth graders were labeled “high risk” of dropping out by an algorithm. Just 11% of White ninth graders got that same label. Every student in the state gets a risk score before high school. With @Chalkbeat:
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Facebook is collecting ultrasensitive personal data about abortion seekers and enabling anti-abortion organizations to use that data as a tool to target people online, in violation of its own policies.
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We tested whether some of the factors commonly cited by internet providers and industry professionals explained away the disparities. In most cases, they didn’t. Here’s our methodology for those who want to dig in.
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One Texas-based lender, whose top markets include Dallas, Houston, and Austin, was 160% more likely to deny Black applicants than comparable White applicants.
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🧵New investigation: Do you know who’s informed when you visit government websites? Sites for abortion providers? Those serving LGBTQ people? We found online tracking is common, even where privacy would seem paramount.
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Nationally, our analysis found, the mortgage industry was 40% to 80% more likely in 2019 to deny home loans to people of color than to White people with similar financial characteristics.
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Our latest with @reveal: The world’s largest social media platform—Facebook—knows who’s visiting the websites of hundreds of crisis pregnancy centers.
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🚨JOURNALISM JOBS THREAD🚨 Investigative news stories can be long, complex and overwhelming. But they don’t have to be. Investigations can be short, funny or even visual. Investigations are fundamentally about demanding accountability from institutions and people with power. /1.
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If you’re protesting, secure your phone. Save our guide on how to prep your phone before attending a protest:
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Two years ago, we found that the Facebook Pixel was present on 30% of the top 100,000 websites. What we didn’t know was exactly what type of data those pixels were sending to Facebook. And that’s where @MozillaRally came in. ⬇️
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We uncovered Meta’s pixel on the FAFSA site as part of a crowdsourced study in partnership with @MozillaRally. To get an idea of how we built this panel and keep participants’ data private, dig into our methodology. Then, consider joining yourself.
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NEW: Publishers may finally be able to ditch AMP, the strict set of rules for mobile websites created by Google. The change was announced as the company faces tough antitrust scrutiny.
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JOB ALERT: We're hiring a Privacy Reporter to cover the erosion of privacy in just about every aspect of our lives — from facial recognition scans at the airport to the ads tracking you across the Internet. Apply by Nov. 15: Shares and RTs appreciated.
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12 hours until launch 🚀 The Markup is coming tomorrow morning!
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