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30 Nov, 7 tweets, 3 min read
Your contributions to nonprofit newsrooms like ours help journalists conduct vital investigations. themarkup.org/give-today
If you’re looking for other nonprofit newsrooms to support this #GivingNewsDay, we hope you’ll consider @scalawagmag...
@THECITYNY
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More from @themarkup

The Markup Profile picture
2 Dec
A decade ago, a group of UCLA professors developed software that used data to predict where crime would happen, promising police could thwart it.

PredPol, as they called it, was supposed to be race neutral. We and @Gizmodo found its predictions are not. themarkup.org/prediction-bia…
We found more than seven million predictions PredPol sent to dozens of police departments and left unsecured on the web.

We analyzed predictions for 38 U.S. policing agencies between 2018 and 2021—and discovered a pattern.
In Portage, Mich., the neighborhoods most targeted by the software have nine times the proportion of Black residents as the city average. Graphic that reads: “It’s j...
Read 14 tweets
The Markup Profile picture
30 Nov
This #GivingNewsDay, here’s a look at the power of a nonprofit newsroom in 2021. 🧵
In February, @darakerr found Postmates couriers were the targets of a phishing scam that drained multiple workers of their earnings.

After publication, the workers we interviewed were reimbursed for their lost earnings. themarkup.org/working-for-an…
In March, an investigation from @ToddFeathers revealed that school-advising software was using race as a predictor of how likely students were to succeed.

Texas A&M stopped using the risk scoring feature of the software following our reporting.
themarkup.org/news/2021/03/3…
Read 7 tweets
The Markup Profile picture
4 Nov
Our colleagues at Germany’s @SZ used Citizen Browser data to uncover the messaging that made its way into voters’ news feeds during the country’s recent election cycle. getrevue.co/profile/citize…
They found voters of the far-right AfD party were more likely to see posts attacking issues like climate change, migration, and COVID-19 from their party leaders.

Meanwhile, voters from other parties were generally served coverage on those topics from established media outlets.
We’re thrilled that our tools are being used to reveal how polarization on Facebook is playing out beyond the United States.

If you want to dig deeper into the data and see some examples, check out @SZ’s report. projekte.sueddeutsche.de/artikel/politi…
Read 4 tweets
The Markup Profile picture
3 Nov
We published our 200th story today.

This is a huge milestone for our small nonprofit newsroom—mind if we indulge in a quick recap of our recent work? ⬇️
This story from @darakerr was one of @ToddFeathers’ favorite pieces of journalism this year.

“An example of investigating an industry that tries to turn people into data and turning it around by using data to show the tragedies that attitude can create.”
themarkup.org/working-for-an…
@LeonYin appreciated @tenuous and @colinlecher’s reporting on NYC high school admissions.

“This story investigates a system that upholds segregation through arbitrary and inconsistent rules. I especially appreciated students’ perspectives.” themarkup.org/news/2021/05/2…
Read 8 tweets
The Markup Profile picture
3 Nov
Police can request data on every person’s device in a specific area through something called a “geofence warrant.”

In California, law enforcement agencies appear to be severely underreporting these warrants, @tenuous and @alfredwkng found. themarkup.org/privacy/2021/1…
Geofence warrants are a fairly new concept mostly involving data from Google.

Privacy advocates say they violate civil liberties. For example, the @ACLU found that law enforcement was using geofence data to track Black Lives Matter protesters in 2016. themarkup.org/ask-the-markup…
California is one of few states where law enforcement agencies must disclose geofence warrants to a state dataset.

We looked at that dataset—as well as a geofence transparency report from Google—and found the numbers didn’t add up.
Read 6 tweets
The Markup Profile picture
14 Oct
NEW: Amazon placed items from its house brands and exclusives ahead of competitors with better customer ratings and more sales, @adrjeffries and @leonyin found after examining the results of nearly 3,500 popular product searches. themarkup.org/amazons-advant…
Take Amazon’s Happy Belly Cinnamon Crunch cereal, for example.

It had four stars and 1,010 reviews, but Amazon gave it the number one search result spot, ahead of Cap’n Crunch, which had five stars and 14,069 reviews.
We found that knowing only whether a product was an Amazon brand or exclusive could predict in seven out of 10 cases whether the company would rank the item first in search results.

You read that right. Seven out of 10.
Read 15 tweets

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