Jon Keegan

Investigative Data Journalist

Jon Keegan is passionate about revealing the hidden patterns created by our interactions with the big platforms. He is happiest when his computer’s fan is running full-tilt while collecting millions of rows of data.

Before The Markup, he was a Senior Research Fellow at the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia University, researching signals of trust in online news and studying the role of AI in journalism. He also worked at The Wall Street Journal for 18 years, where he ran the interactive graphics team.

Jon’s work has won several journalism awards, including the Loeb Award, the Society of Professional Journalists’ Excellence in Journalism Award and the Society of News Design’s Best of Digital Gold Award.

keegan@themarkup.org @jonkeegan @jonkeegan@mastodon.social

A children’s book style illustration of a child reading a textbook online, as a scary monster sucks up all her browser history, simulating the way the online trackers on popular kids websites quietly suck up identifying information about youth.

Pixel Hunt

Facebook Watches Teens Online As They Prep for College

An investigation by The Markup found Meta’s pixel tracking students from kindergarten to college

November 22, 2023 05:00 ET

Photo collage of four distorted and pixelated images of cats placed in front of a radial background made of the same distorted and repeated images

Hello World

Meet Nightshade—A Tool Empowering Artists to Fight Back Against AI

A newly released research paper outlines a tool artists can use to make their work act like “poison” if it is ingested by an AI image generator

November 11, 2023 08:00 ET

Image of U.S. President Joe Biden seated at a desk, passing a pen to Vice President Kamala Harris, who is standing. The background screen shows the words 'Artificial Intelligence' with the subheading 'Safety, Security, and Trust' displayed prominently.

News

The Problems Biden’s AI Order Must Address

The Markup gives a section-by-section breakdown of the summarized executive order on artificial intelligence

November 1, 2023 14:57 ET

A hand holds an iPhone that displays seven applications under the title "Throttled": Facebook, Messenger, Instagram, Threads, X, Bluesky, Patreon, Substack and WhatsApp.

News

Twitter Is Throttling Patreon Links, Creators Say It Undermines Their Livelihood

Markup readers helped uncover the link delays, which also affect WhatsApp and Messenger

October 16, 2023 10:30 ET

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

Digital illustration of a phone displaying a privacy policy, with various parts of it highlighted and annotated with numbers. Behind the phone are 6 vignettes that are numbered. The first vignette shows a car with a dashed line pointing to a location symbol. The second vignette shows a series of spheres on a conveyer belt passing through a machine; they end up as cubes. The third vignette is a bunch of browser windows with little fuzzballs interspersed among them. The fourth vignette shows two hands about to shake, and dollar signs are behind them. The fifth vignette shows a room, with eyes peering in the back of the room. The sixth vignette shows a black tentacle creature chasing a blue cursor character.

The BreakdownPrivacy

How to Quickly Get to the Important Truth Inside Any Privacy Policy

An investigative data journalist and a former tech lawyer teach you how to spot tricks and hidden disclosures within these interminable documents—and even how to claw back some privacy

August 3, 2023 08:00 ET

Hello World

What Are “Data Clean Rooms”?

The dirt on data brokers’ latest privacy buzzword

July 1, 2023 08:00 ET

Digital illustration of a hologram of a person's head, with glowing blobs emitting around it. The hologram is surrounded by bean characters who are staring at it.

Privacy

How Your Attention Is Auctioned Off to Advertisers

In mere milliseconds, online advertisers scrutinize your personal data and bid for your eyeballs

June 23, 2023 09:00 ET

Surreal digital illustration of various vignettes and closeups of people in pain and suffering. At the center of the composition is a phone showing a text conversation with a crisis center.

Pixel Hunt

Suicide Hotlines Promise Anonymity. Dozens of Their Websites Send Sensitive Data to Facebook

The Markup found many sites tied to the national mental health crisis hotline transmitted information on visitors through the Meta Pixel

June 13, 2023 06:00 ET

Digital illustration of scientists analyzing a wall filled with boxes containing human heads. Some scientists have clipboards, others are picking up the heads off the shelves.

Privacy

From “Heavy Purchasers” of Pregnancy Tests to the Depression-Prone: We Found 650,000 Ways Advertisers Label You

A spreadsheet on ad platform Xandr’s website revealed a massive collection of “audience segments” used to target consumers based on highly specific, sometimes intimate information and inferences

June 8, 2023 06:00 ET

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