Challenging technology to serve the public good.
Aaron Sankin reports on the intersection of technology and inequality. While at The Markup, he has focused on issues ranging from the digital divide and social media platform governance to law enforcement technology and car insurance regulation.
Before The Markup, he covered online extremism for the Center for Investigative Reporting, where he launched the Hate Report newsletter and co-created the Hate Sleuths citizen journalism initiative. Before that, he was a senior staff writer at the Daily Dot and a founding editor of the Huffington Post’s San Francisco vertical.
Aaron’s reporting has won various journalism awards, such as the Edward R. Murrow Award, the National Association of Black Journalists Salute to Excellence Award, the Sigma Award, and the SABEW Association for Business Journalists Award. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Motley Fool, and Gizmodo.
Aaron uses he/him pronouns.
Show Your WorkStill Loading
AT&T, Verizon, EarthLink, and CenturyLink disproportionately offered the worst deals to lower-income areas and communities of color across the country—while charging the same for faster speeds in higher-income and Whiter areas
The BreakdownStill Loading
Small tubes good, big tubes better
Amazon’s Advantage
As evidence, the committee cited The Markup’s investigation into Amazon’s preferencing of its own brands and exclusive products in search results
Allstate’s Algorithm
A 2020 Markup investigation found the company pursuing similar goals in other states
Amazon’s Advantage
The measure would address issues raised by multiple investigations from The Markup
Show Your WorkPrediction: Bias
A trove of unsecured data allowed the first-ever independent analysis of actual crime predictions across the U.S. by the self-described software leader, PredPol
Prediction: Bias
Millions of crime predictions left on an unsecured server show PredPol mostly avoided Whiter neighborhoods, targeted Black and Latino neighborhoods
The Breakdown
Since companies typically try to avoid regulation, Facebook’s support for it is weird. Or is it? There’s more to the company’s proposal than meets the eye
Google the Giant
They said Google’s decision to block advertisers from seeing “Black Lives Matter” and other social justice YouTube videos was the last straw
Google the Giant
“Black power” and “Black Lives Matter” can't be used to find videos for ads, but “White power” and “White lives matter” were just fine
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