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Magic Spreadsheets That Equip the Public
Use these tools and techniques to bring “receipts from streets” with little-to-no code
Leon Yin
Investigative Data Journalist
Leon Yin translates story ideas into testable hypotheses—the cornerstone of our journalism. He builds bespoke datasets and uses interdisciplinary methods to report on technology. Leon left The Markup in July 2023.
His reporting of Google search’s self-referential results was cited in the opening remarks of a congressional hearing on tech giants and antitrust. In 2022, he won a Gerald Loeb Award for Personal Finance and Consumer Reporting with Adrianne Jeffries for their series, “Amazon’s Advantage.”
Before joining The Markup, he was a research scientist at NYU’s Center for Social Media and Politics, a research affiliate at the Data & Society Research Institute, and a software engineer at NASA.
Build Your Own Dataset
Slow Internet? Find Out What Side of the Digital Divide You’re On
All you need to test for disparities in internet speeds and pricing is a computer, internet access, a Google account, and some free time
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See the Neighborhoods Internet Providers Excluded from Fast Internet
Explore The Markup’s interactive map to see where AT&T, CenturyLink, and Verizon offered only slow internet speeds in major U.S. cities
LevelUp
Journalists, You Should Be Looking for Undocumented APIs. Here’s How to Start
A tutorial on how to build datasets from the hidden feeds powering almost every website on the internet
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Introducing the United States Place Sampler (USPS)
Easily sample random U.S. street addresses using this new tool from Big Local News and The Markup
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How We Uncovered Disparities in Internet Deals
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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Dollars to Megabits, You May Be Paying 400 Times As Much As Your Neighbor for Internet Service
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
Journalists: Investigate Which Neighborhoods in Your City Are Offered the Worst Internet Deals
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
Citizen Browser
As Demand for Medication Abortion Increases, Facebook Allows Ads for Potentially Dangerous “Abortion Reversal” Procedure
The ads appear as the company faces criticism for limiting content about medication abortions
Citizen Browser
Facebook Promised to Remove “Sensitive” Ads. Here’s What It Left Behind
Facebook pledged to remove race, health conditions, and political affiliation from ad-targeting options, but The Markup found advertisers can still easily target the same people
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