Coronavirus

Remote Learning During the Pandemic Has Hit Vulnerable Students the Hardest

Data on more than 800 schools shows big disparities in Florida

The BreakdownCoronavirus

What Ever Happened to Those Coronavirus Contact Tracing Apps?

Adoption’s been slow—but stay tuned

Google the Giant

To Head Off Regulators, Google Makes Certain Words Taboo

The Markup obtained internal documents that coach new employees to avoid creating “very real legal risks” in using words like “market” and “network effects”

Locked Out

Data Brokers May Report COVID-19–Related Evictions for Years

Scant rules around tenant background screenings mean money woes during the pandemic’s economic slowdown will haunt some tenants, even if they pay up

Tech CEOs Face Aggressive Questioning at Congressional Antitrust Hearing

Lawmakers allege abuse of monopoly power and political bias

Google the Giant

Congressman Says The Markup Investigation Proves Google Has Created a "Walled Garden"

Comment comes as part of big tech CEO grilling by antitrust committee

Google the Giant

Google’s Top Search Result? Surprise! It’s Google

The search engine dedicated almost half of the first page of results in our test to its own products, which dominated the coveted top of the page

Show Your WorkGoogle the Giant

How We Analyzed Google’s Search Results

Novel categorizations and “staining” techniques uncovered how much space on the search results page Google dedicates to itself

Google the Giant

Google Ad Portal Equated “Black Girls” with Porn

Searching Google’s ad buying portal for “Black girls” returned hundreds of terms leading to “adult content”

The Breakdown

Is This Amazon Review Bullshit?

Spotting the fakes isn’t always possible, but here are some tips