The Markup announces The Citizen Browser Project, an initiative with The NYT to analyze how the algorithms of Facebook and YouTube serve content to users
The Markup, a nonprofit newsroom that investigates how the world's most powerful institutions use technology to reshape society …
The Markup
Context & Ripple Effects
The Markup was founded in 2018 by former ProPublica reporters with a $20M gift from Craigslist's Craig Newmark specifically to investigate big tech, so Citizen Browser is the flagship test of that thesis: rather than waiting for platform disclosures, it builds its own measurement infrastructure, recruiting a panel of real users whose browsers feed feed and recommendation data to researchers working with The New York Times.
Facebook and YouTube lose control of the narrative around their recommendation algorithms, since The Markup and The New York Times can now publish findings drawn from observed user sessions rather than platform-supplied data.
The New York Times gains a proprietary data pipeline for algorithm-accountability coverage, differentiating its tech reporting from outlets dependent on company statements and leaked documents.
Second-order effects
Facebook's response — code changes that impede automated collection of News Feed posts — signals that other audited platforms will treat independent scrapers as adversaries, raising the technical cost of every future audit.
Other nonprofit and academic research teams are pushed toward the same panel-of-real-users model, since the alternative (API access) is demonstrably unavailable when platforms resist external measurement.
Third-order effects
If the pattern holds, algorithmic accountability becomes an arms race between independent auditors building browser-level instrumentation and platforms hardening their systems against it — with regulators likely to weigh in on whether users may share their own feeds with researchers.
The durable question this project forces is where the permission boundary sits for data users can see on their own screens: platforms claim it as private, auditors treat it as observable fact, and that dispute now has a standing institutional challenger.
The trend: Platform algorithms are shifting from self-reported black boxes to independently measured systems, as nonprofit newsrooms build their own observational infrastructure and platforms respond with anti-collection countermeasures.
Interesting project from @themarkup: The Citizen Browser, “a custom web browser designed to audit the algorithms that social media platforms use to determine what information they serve their users” https://themarkup.org/...
“A nationally representative panel of 1,200 people will be paid to install the custom web browser on their desktops, which allows them to share real-time data directly from their Facebook and YouTube accounts with The Markup.” https://themarkup.org/...
“Beware that, when fighting monsters, you yourself do not become a monster.” It's ironic that when a watchdog tries to monitor FB, they replicate its worst excesses. This is the data-leaky intermediation of every sketchy app on the former FB Platform. https://themarkup.org/...
A nationally representative panel of 1,200 people is to be paid to give researchers access to their Facebook & YouTube feeds. Ridiculous that researchers have to go to such lengths but great that @JuliaAngwin's @themarkup is doing it https://themarkup.org/...
I think it's quite disingenuous for @themarkup to call their Citizen Browser Project a ‘unique way to collect data’ when @WhoTargetsMe uses the same principle and is much older. I know content ≠ ads, but credit where credit is due. You don't need to pretend to be #1. https://twit…
What political stories are being pushed to Black voters in swing states? What groups are recommended to young voters in Texas? Exciting new tool from @themarkup that audits the algorithms that decide what we see on our social media feeds. https://themarkup.org/...
oh my god i am so jealous of @themarkup and i hope many people sign up and install this browser because everyone will benefit from this journalism https://themarkup.org/...
It's user side testing based on directly collected data I LOVE IT . Instead of waiting on access and hoops from plat forms I love it https://twitter.com/...
A custom web browser designed to audit the algorithms social media platforms use to determine what information they serve their users, what news and narratives are amplified or suppressed, and which online communities those users are encouraged to join. https://themarkup.org/...
We will be working with @nytimes to analyze data collected from a nationally representative panel of social media users. Follow the progress of Citizen Browser by signing up for our newsletter: https://themarkup.org/...