Kaveh Waddell

I’m a John S. Knight journalism fellow at Stanford.

I’m also affiliated with the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered AI. Previously, I was an investigative journalist at Consumer Reports’ Digital Lab—and before that, I was on staff at Axios, The Atlantic, and National Journal, and a freelancer in Beirut, Lebanon.

Here’s some of my reporting:

Amazon opens most of its warehouses in neighborhoods with a disproportionately high number of people of color and low-income residents, bringing safety hazards, quality of life issues like potholes, clogged roads and noise, and airborne pollutants. This data-driven project was co-published with The Guardian. Click to read the investigation.Photo: Alex Welsh

Tenant screening reports can make it really hard to find a decent apartment if you have certain criminal records, or if you’ve had an eviction filed against you, even if you won your eviction case or it was withdrawn. Black and Latinx renters are disproportionately likely to have those poisonous records. Click to read the investigation.Photo illustration: Ricardo Santos

Automated captions—like on YouTube or Zoom—often fall short, raising hurdles for users who are deaf or hard of hearing. And our in-depth testing found that they systematically perform worse for people whose first language isn't English, even if they're fluent. Click to read the investigation.Illustration: Klawe Rzeczy

Several major auto insurers charge more to drivers with less education or lower-paying jobs. Sometimes it's hundreds of dollars more a year, our experiment found. Systemic racism and economic inequality mean these disparities stand to hit drivers of color hardest. Click to read the investigation.Illustration: Laura Liedo

Marketers regularly use Facebook to promote dangerous or illegal supplements. In some cases, we found, they target these potentially harmful ads directly at vulnerable populations, such as people searching for information about diabetes, or at young students interested in the STEM field. Click to read the investigation. Photo illustration: Israel G. Vargas

Some medical algorithms give doctors different results depending on whether or not a patient is Black. A group of docs and med students are pushing to remove race from one of these equations, which can help decide who is eligible for kidney transplants. This project was co-published with The Root. Click to read the investigation.Illustration: David Senior

Here’s some of my past work:

DISPATCHES FROM BEIRUT

Lebanon's Facebook vigilantes are “turning suspects into criminals in one click” (The Atlantic)

A quiet campaign to map Lebanon's mass graves before they're destroyed (The Atlantic)

Beirut tries to get back on the bike (CityLab)

POLITICS & POLICY

Defenders against misinformation descend on 2020 campaigns (Axios)

Police can use a legal gray area to rob people of their belongings—without even charging them with a crime (The Atlantic)

America’s post-9/11 “Muslim registry” (The Atlantic)

After Trump’s Muslim ban, an army of attorneys descends on Dulles (The Atlantic)

How New York’s top advertisers tried to fight ISIS propaganda (The Atlantic)

CULTURE

As kids, two Guinean brothers invented a new script for their native language. Now they’re trying to get it on every smartphone (The Atlantic)

How Seattle’s Iranians kept their culture while ingraining into the city (The Atlantic)

TECHNOLOGY

A monumental tug-of-war over biased AI (Axios)

Human workers are being automated like machines (Axios)

Facing ALS, a systems engineer built a smart home to preserve his independence (NY Mag)

Will self-driving cars be able to navigate the roads where they're most needed? (Wired)

SURVEILLANCE

AI surveillance goes to school (Axios)

License-plate readers have helped police and lenders target low-income neighborhoods (The Atlantic)

How big data harms poor communities (The Atlantic)

PRIVACY

People who most need digital privacy often can’t afford the smartphones that provide it (The Atlantic)

Unregulated people-search services offer up personal information for cheap or free, with few safeguards (The Atlantic)

In most states, your boss can track your location around the clock (The Atlantic)

Here’s how to reach me:

✉️ kavehw@stanford.edu
🐦 twitter.com/kavehwaddell
🐘 sfba.social/@kaveh
📖 fb.com/kavehwaddell

Communicate securely:
🔏 keybase.io/kavehwaddell
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