The Best of The Markup
10+ most popular The Markup articles, as voted by our community.
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The Markup on Facebook
Want to Find a Misinformed Public? Facebook’s Already Done It
While vowing to police COVID-19 misinformation on its platform, Facebook let advertisers target users interested in “pseudoscience”
The Markup on Mastodon
We Joined Mastodon. Here’s What We Learned About Privacy and Security
As Elon Musk sends Twitter into chaos, we’re sharing what we picked up about Mastodon as we selected a server
The Markup on Media
The Markup on Privacy
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
The Markup on Race
College Prep Software Naviance Is Selling Advertising Access to Millions of Students
The software, often required by schools, enables colleges and universities to choose from an array of demographics, including race, to target prospective students.
The Markup on Technology
Dark Patterns that Mislead Consumers Are All Over the Internet
Think you can tell a dark pattern from an ethically designed prompt? Take our quiz to find out
«dark pattern—design choices that steer people into decisions they may not have made under normal conditions.»
Popular
These are some all-time favorites with Refind users.
Who Is Collecting Data from Your Car?
A firehose of sensitive data from your vehicle is flowing to a group of companies you’ve probably never heard of
Forget Milk and Eggs: Supermarkets Are Having a Fire Sale on Data About You
When you use supermarket discount cards, you are sharing much more than what is in your cart—and grocery chains like Kroger are reaping huge profits selling this data to brands and advertisers
Google’s Top Search Result? Surprise! It’s Google
The search engine dedicated almost half of the first page of results in our test to its own products, which dominated the coveted top of the page
Swinging the Vote?
Google’s black box algorithm controls which political emails land in your main inbox. For 2020 presidential candidates, the differences are stark.
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