Investigations - The Markup

Twitter/X headquarters with red bars in the sky.

Twitter is Still Throttling Competitors’ Links—Check for Yourself

Loading links to Bluesky, Facebook, Instagram, and Substack takes far longer than to other sites. We built a tool so you can check any domain you like

September 15, 2023 10:16 ET

Photos of Maurice Newton, left, and Mia Townsend, right.

Machine Learning

False Alarm: How Wisconsin Uses Race and Income to Label Students “High Risk”

The Markup found the state’s decade-old dropout prediction algorithms don’t work and may be negatively influencing how educators perceive students of color

April 27, 2023 08:00 ET

Illustration of a hospital room with a maze built in it. Hospital employees including nurses, doctors and executives are rearranging and building the maze.

Organ Failure

How a Group of Health Executives Transformed the Liver Transplant System

Hospitals in New York and California engineered a policy shift that let them source livers from hundreds of miles away

March 21, 2023 18:45 ET

Illustration of a person hunched over a hospital bed with their back facing towards the viewer. There is a clock and X-ray of a liver in the background.

Organ Failure

Poorer States Suffer Under New Organ Donation Rules, As Livers Go to Waste

Life-saving liver transplants have plummeted in some Southern and Midwestern states with higher death rates from liver disease, while New York and California have made big gains

March 21, 2023 14:00 ET

Photo illustration of a hand reaching out for help. The left half of it has a darker skin tone, while the right half has a whiter skin tone. In the background are torn photos of homeless encampments and tents, as well as numbers and abstract shapes.

Investigation

L.A.’s Scoring System for Subsidized Housing Gives Black and Latino People Experiencing Homelessness Lower Priority Scores

An investigation by The Markup found racial disparities in L.A.’s intake system for unhoused people

February 28, 2023 08:00 ET

Illustration of a person with purple hair and shoes, being dissolved into pixels. There are prescription bottles surrounding them and some of those bottles are also being dissolved into pixels.

Pixel Hunt

“Out Of Control”: Dozens of Telehealth Startups Sent Sensitive Health Information to Big Tech Companies

An investigation by The Markup and STAT found 49 out of 50 telehealth websites sharing health data via Big Tech’s tracking tools

December 13, 2022 06:00 ET

Working for an Algorithm

When Drivers Are Attacked, Uber Leaves Police Waiting for Help

An investigation by The Markup found that Uber is slow to respond to law enforcement requests, leaving drivers vulnerable to repeated attacks

December 9, 2022 09:00 ET

Illustration of the Meta hand with thumbs up holding a magnifying glass over a 1040 tax form.

Pixel Hunt

Tax Filing Websites Have Been Sending Users’ Financial Information to Facebook

The Markup found services including TaxAct, TaxSlayer, and H&R Block sending sensitive data

November 22, 2022 08:00 ET

Illustration of a map, with the roads evoking the silhouette of a head. There are various pencils filling in checkmarks on location pins scattered throughout the map.

Privacy

How Political Campaigns Use Your Phone’s Location to Target You

Before you got in line on Election Day, the emerging and largely unregulated political tracking industry was able to trace your movements

November 8, 2022 08:00 ET

An illustration of two houses, one receiving many dashed blue lines and the other receiving a single pink line, against an abstract street grid.

Still Loading

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

October 19, 2022 06:51 ET