Show Your Work

Show Your WorkCitizen Browser

How We Built a Facebook Inspector

The Citizen Browser project seeks to illuminate the content Facebook elevates in its users’ feeds

Show Your WorkElection 2020

How We Analyzed the Cost of Trump’s and Biden’s Campaign Ads on Facebook

And found the company has been charging Biden more for his ads.

Show Your WorkBlacklight

How We Built a Real-time Privacy Inspector

Blacklight catalogs the many ways any website tracks visitors: from cookies to capturing every user keystroke and mouse movement

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

Show Your WorkBanned Bounty

How We Investigated Banned Items on Amazon.com

It wasn’t that hard; Amazon’s own search and recommendation tools led the way

Show Your WorkLocked Out

How We Investigated the Tenant Screening Industry

Public records, interviews, and months of searching and reading court records helped us uncover how automated screenings come up short

Show Your WorkCoronavirus

How We Analyzed States’ Coronavirus Testing Plans

Show Your WorkGoogle the Giant

How We Examined Gmail’s Treatment of Political Emails

We conducted an experiment with a new email address to try to figure out how Gmail's sorting algorithm worked without user input

Show Your WorkAllstate’s Algorithm

How We Analyzed Allstate’s Car Insurance Algorithm 

By parsing a rare document containing fine details of the company’s auto insurance pricing, we found stark differences in how high proposed price hikes were allowed to rise