I am excited to officially announce the launch of the Digital Witness Lab, a new research lab I am starting with 🔗
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Surya Mattu
@suryamattu
I lead the Digital Witness Lab Prev: Investigative Data Journalist , and 
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@suryamattu@journa.hostSurya Mattu’s Tweets
This is a helpful follow up for folks who were paying attention to the Meta/Wire scandal. Also a good reminder for all of us that tech investigations should be held to the same high standard of fact checking you would expect from investigative journalism
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New work w/ @Mahaprajna_N & @ArchitMeta
We looked into Devesh Kumar's past and honestly, we were not surprised that he pulled a fast one in The Wire's newsroom.
A lot of this investigation is also based on my SOCMINT skills and I am really proud of it. twitter.com/AltNews/status…
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Journalists “have to find ways to tell data stories that give readers a sense of agency, not apathy, around the role technology play in their life,” told #NPFfellows.
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Corruption is flourishing, inequality is growing - and disinformation is rampant. But we are not powerless, we can do something about it - for example with a small donation to organisations that stand for change. If you can afford, please consider a donation. 🧵
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I wrote for on the role of independent data collection in journalism. I think about this topic a lot - my data journalism career has essentially been a set of experiments in independent data collection.
Your can read it here
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I am looking for students who can speak Tagalog and/or have knowledge of Filipino politics for a project studying hate speech in the Philippines.
Expertise required: Python programming, and large scale data analysis. Any leads appreciated!
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I'm working on a story about FTX for Bloomberg.
Did you lose access to your FTX account?
Email us your story at ftxusers@bloomberg.net
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INTERNATIONAL JOURNALISTS 🌍 Only 8 days left to apply for a Knight-Wallace Journalism Fellowship.
Start your application now: loom.ly/gYYRTaw
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A new report on data-driven campaigning in Hungary’s '22 election documents chilling new forms of misuse of personal data. They used Blacklight to document how websites were used to collect citizen's personal data. hrw.org/report/2022/12
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Stating for posterity that this is the latest in a series that shows how the Pixel scoops up data from sensitive sites such as hospitals, studentaid.gov and abortion clinics.
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A blockbuster investigative report from @themarkup and The @Verge reveals that major tax-prep services illegally embedded the Facebook tracking pixel in their sites, configured so that it transmitted as much data as possible to the surveillance giant.
theverge.com/2022/11/22/234 3/
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The Pixel Hunt continues to be the gift that keeps on giving. Another example of why the context in which data is collected matters. It's hard to find these examples through fully automated programmatic collection. twitter.com/angiewaller/st 1/2
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NEW: from @varlogsimon, @colinlecher and me. We found that if you file taxes online, your detailed financial data might have gone to Facebook.
This report was made possible by people who volunteer their data through @MozillaRally 
themarkup.org/pixel-hunt/202
themarkup.org/pixel-hunt/2021
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there are few things that could possibly get me to write some tweets, let alone a tweet thread, but this exciting news definitely counts:
. and I are starting the Digital Witness Lab, a research lab hosted at !
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'She also appreciates the value of these online services and questions whether providers themselves realize all the different, leaky ways that the information they’re collecting about patients is floating out.' This is exactly why I built Blacklight.
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Researchers at the Opiod Policy Institute used @suryamattu's Blacklight tool to show how substance-abuse health sites are sharing data about users with third parties.
I love it when people use our persistent monitoring tools for accountability!
wired.com/story/substanc
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Come work with me and the unique community ! Our mission is to understand and improve the relationship between digital technology and society. We’re hiring at all career stages: emerging scholars, Master’s, PhD, postdocs, visiting professionals, faculty. [THREAD]
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twitterisgoinggreat.com
Cobbled together, not nearly enough entries yet, but an attempt to capture some of this madness in a jar.
Shoutout to for her timeline code.
This is a joint project of a handful of reprobates in the community
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OMG you have to re-watch the Larry David / #FTX ad this morning (well played ) twitter.com/alfredwkng/sta
This Tweet is unavailable.
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Scoop: Meta promised "immigration support" for laid-off workers on visas. But former employees told me that they're getting "radio silence" from a dedicated Meta hotline despite multiple emails. In desperation, some people have hired their own lawyers.
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New story by me in The Markup:
Political campaigns are using your phone's location data to target you with ads. Experts say these efforts could enable the spread of misinformation and even suppress votes. 🧵1/10
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True the Vote released a web-app called IV3 that uses data from the USPS to allegedly challenge hundreds of thousands of voter registrations. We got the code and took it apart.
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. is launching the Digital Witness Lab, which collects data in the public interest to uncover surveillance, the spread of misinformation, and other forms of algorithmic harm enabled by digital platforms.
The lab is led by .
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And finally if you are thinking of leaving the 🐦 site for the 🐘 site you can find me there at
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We are interested in expanding our network. If you’re a journalist and are interested in learning more about our Whatsapp Watch project please reach out at surya@digitalwitnesslab.org
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At the lab we are going to expand access to these methods by building public facing tools and collaborating with journalists across the world. We have started development on our first project Whatsapp Watch, which focuses on the spread of misinformation in India and Brazil.
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If you want to see what I mean by that, here are some of my recent investigations that relied on novel data collection strategies.
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This was my last week @themarkup, where I’ve worked since even before it had a name. I’ve had the privilege of doing some of the best work of my career at this place and I am going to miss this talented and generous crew.
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The lab will build on what I've learned after almost a decade working as a data journalist. One of the key learnings has been the value of collecting data from places that are hard to reach.
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I am thrilled to be working in a place that is filled with talented researchers who are answering important questions about the influence technology has on our lives. I have followed their work for years and even used it in my investigations
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And finally, Blacklight can only exist because of the foundational work that came before it. It would not have been possible to build this tool without the work and support of @s_englehardt, Gunes Acar, @random_walker, @jonathanmayer and the @DuckDuckGo Tracker Radar dataset.
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Think of us as photojournalists in algorithm city. We build the tools to witness what’s taking place on these platforms.
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Gonna miss this when it’s gone
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Aerodynamics of a cheeseburger at Mach 0.05 for a timeline palette cleanse
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I am looking for PhD students this year!
If you are interested in working on misinformation/polarization particularly in the global south, apply to work with me!
Rutgers iSchool is well ranked & has a great set of faculty working on similar problems.
DM/email me with questions
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Apologies for the typo. Still waiting for that "edit tweet" button 🙄
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Glad to see them come to this conclusion and I hope they share what they learn from the review so we can all sharpen our the methods we use to hold the powerful to account
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Statement from The Wire on the Meta Investigation.
In light of the concerns and doubts raised about our coverage of Meta, we are setting up an internal review of all documents, information, source material and sources used for these stories.
thewire.in/media/the-wire
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I saw this play out in a slightly different way when I first started working as a data journalist. There were many incentives to _visualize_ the data but not as many to collect it.
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Most of our time should be spent collecting & interrogating datasets, and simply describing those datasets, rather than building fancy models. But first we must deal with the incentive problem—the former type of work isn’t considered sophisticated enough to be publication worthy.
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For all my followers who have been glued to their devices as the meta / wire saga unfolds - here is something nice to look at as you wait for whatever comes next
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Journalists — Want help liberating important public records?
The incredible data journalist has just launched the project to help you fight for and clean data. He’s not on Twitter much but sign up for his newsletter!
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In his first story for , dove into "accountability apps" that churches use to monitor everything congregants do on their phones. These apps are billed as anti-pornography tools, but they do a lot more than that wired.com/story/covenant Tip
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