Jeremy B. Merrill's Clips
These are some things I'm proud of:
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The Markup
Facebook Charged Biden a Higher Price Than Trump for Campaign Ads
The result of an opaque pricing system is an apparent disparity between the candidates, I showed with extensive data analysis.
- ProPublica
“Trumpcare” Does Not Exist. Nevertheless Facebook and Google Cash In on Misleading Ads for “Garbage” Health Insurance.
Online ads advertise a non-existent product, sold with shady tactics that regulators don’t have the tools to stop.
- The Markup
Does Facebook still sell discriminatory ads?
Facebook banned discriminatory job ads. But it continued selling them.
- Quartz
AI for Investigations: Sorting through the Luanda Leaks
I devised a machine-learning system to help ICIJ journalists search a massive set of leaked documents.
- Quartz
Facebook ads targeted Fox News fans for shady silver coin scheme
We exposed a Beverly Hills boiler-room that used politically-inflammatory Facebook ads in an alleged scheme to defraud seniors of their savings. (Ten months later, the company was shut down by 30 states and the federal government.)
- ProPublica
How Big Oil Dodges Facebook’s New Ad Transparency Rules
With shady “coalitions,” trade groups from petroleum and other industries hide their identities to push their favored policies on Facebook – because Facebook doesn’t verify the existence of the groups it says pay for ads on the site.
- The New York Times
Why Facebook Showed You That Ad for the Candidate You Hate
I used a unique crowd-sourced database of Facebook ads to report on incongruous, jarring political ads targeted to our readers – and patterns in the campaigns’ tactics – during the 2016 election.
- The New York Times
How Donald Trump Talks
Does Donald Trump sound presidential? Quantitatively, he doesn’t.
- The New York Times
The Northeast Corridor's Curviest Stretches, and Amtrak's Plans for Safety and Speed
Part of the cause of the deadly Amtrak 188 crash in 2015 was curvy track on the Amtrak’s route. I made a map to show where these potentially-dangerous stretchs of track were.
- ProPublica