The Markup Receives Recognition and Honors for Their Journalism

The Markup has been named the Hottest in Tech on Adweek’s 2022 Hot List and in August won two national Edward R. Murrow Awards—one for investigative reporting for , in partnership with Gizmodo, and one for excellence in innovation for our project. Prediction: Bias Citizen Browser Adweek’s Annual Hot List Each year Adweek honors the best people, platforms, and companies shaping media across a variety of categories. This year The Markup received recognition as the Hottest in Tech for our investigative reporting and innovative tools. Adweek highlighted our series, which exposed the very real consequences of data exploitation and access to consumers’ most sensitive personal information. Pixel Hunt In partnership with Mozilla Rally, we launched the Facebook Pixel Hunt, the first of the presence of the Meta Pixel, a tracker embedded on websites that sends information on visitors to Facebook. large-scale crowdsourced study The study has resulted in several articles detailing the scope of sensitive information being sent to Facebook. In “ ,” Surya Mattu and Colin Lecher found that the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) website’s embedded Meta Pixel was sending identifying information back to Facebook. Applied for Student Aid Online? Facebook Saw You After The Markup questioned the U.S. Department of Education about the tracking practice, the FAFSA site stopped sharing some details, like name and address, with Facebook, though some less invasive information, like what page on the site a user may have viewed, was still being transmitted at the time of publication. Advocacy groups Accountable Tech and Student Defense to the House Committee on Oversight and Reform requesting a full investigation into the matter. sent a letter In “ ,” Todd Feathers, Simon Fondrie-Teitler, Angie Waller, and Surya Mattu found the Meta Pixel on the websites of 33 of the top 100 U.S. hospitals and the patient portals of seven health systems. Facebook Is Receiving Sensitive Medical Information from Hospital Websites The Meta Pixel had been collecting patients’ sensitive health information—including details about their medical conditions, prescriptions, and doctor’s appointments—and sending it back to Facebook. As a result of the report, many of the hospitals , three hospital systems have sent to a total of 4.8 million patients, and at least five class-action lawsuits have been filed against Meta related to the presence of the pixel on hospital websites. removed the tracker data breach notifications Learn how we built our Meta Pixel inspector. National Edward R. Murrow Awards The Markup won two Radio Television Digital News Association Edward R. Murrow Awards, which are among the most respected journalism awards in the world. Receiving the award for investigative reporting, our Prediction: Bias story “ ,” in partnership with Gizmodo, exposed that crime prediction software PredPol instructed dozens of law enforcement agencies across the country to patrol Black, Latino, and low-income neighborhoods more than richer and Whiter areas. Crime Prediction Software Promised to Be Free of Biases. New Data Shows It Perpetuates Them Why? As it turns out, in addition to the well-reported patterns of the neighborhoods where police make more arrests, there’s also a pattern to who is less likely to decide to report a crime: White people and those living above the poverty line. Prediction: Bias also won the National Association of Black Journalists in the digital media: business category earlier this year. 2022 Salute to Excellence Award Our project received the Murrow Award for excellence in innovation. Citizen Browser A demographically diverse panel of thousands of Facebook users installed our custom desktop application, allowing us to monitor their news feeds and page and group recommendations, and gain valuable insight into the social media giant’s algorithms. Citizen Browser has led to showing how Facebook has determined what information it serves its users, what news and narratives are amplified or suppressed, and which online communities those users are encouraged to join. dozens of reports Learn how we built Citizen Browser. A huge congratulations to our entire team at The Markup for these hard-earned honors, and thank you to our readers, supporters, partners, and everyone who has contributed to the success of our work. Congratulations to all of this year’s and honorees. Edward R. Murrow Award Adweek Hot List By The Markup Also published here Photo by on Giorgio Trovato Unsplash