Big Tech Is Watching You. We’re Watching Big Tech.
Aaron Sankin reports on how technology can be used to harm marginalized people. His focus is on platform governance, online extremism, and regulatory policy.
Before The Markup, he covered online extremism for the Center for Investigative Reporting, where he launched the Hate Report newsletter and co-created the Hate Sleuths citizen journalism initiative. Before that, he was a senior staff writer at the Daily Dot and a founding editor of the Huffington Post’s San Francisco vertical.
His work has earned various awards, including a 2018 Public Radio News Directors Incorporated Award and a 2018 Webby Award. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Motley Fool, and Gizmodo.
Show Your WorkStill Loading
AT&T, Verizon, EarthLink, and CenturyLink disproportionately offered the worst deals to lower-income areas and communities of color across the country—while charging the same for faster speeds in higher-income and Whiter areas
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An investigation by The Markup found that AT&T, Verizon, EarthLink, and CenturyLink disproportionately offered lower-income and least-White neighborhoods slow internet service for the same price as speedy connections they offered in other parts of town
Story Recipes
We analyzed more than 800,000 internet service offers in major U.S. cities. Here’s how you can use our data to report local stories
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Small tubes good, big tubes better
Amazon’s Advantage
As evidence, the committee cited The Markup’s investigation into Amazon’s preferencing of its own brands and exclusive products in search results
Allstate’s Algorithm
A 2020 Markup investigation found the company pursuing similar goals in other states
Amazon’s Advantage
The measure would address issues raised by multiple investigations from The Markup
Show Your WorkPrediction: Bias
A trove of unsecured data allowed the first-ever independent analysis of actual crime predictions across the U.S. by the self-described software leader, PredPol
Prediction: Bias
Millions of crime predictions left on an unsecured server show PredPol mostly avoided Whiter neighborhoods, targeted Black and Latino neighborhoods
The Breakdown
Since companies typically try to avoid regulation, Facebook’s support for it is weird. Or is it? There’s more to the company’s proposal than meets the eye
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