Who am I?
I’m Alejandro Cuevas, an Internet researcher who has spent the past decade studying computer security, privacy, and cybercrime.
As a teenager, I spent a lot of time in online gaming, tech, and hacking communities. I also tried many (often questionable) ways to make money on the Internet: selling things, completing paid surveys, clicking on ads, and building money-making blogs of dubious commercial promise.
Those experiences informed the work that I did to obtain my CS PhD from Carnegie Mellon University. I am currently a postdoctoral fellow at Princeton University’s Center for Information Technology Policy.
What you will find here?
Gonzo Labs is a field guide to the Internet’s strange communities and shadow economies.
I practice what I affectionately call academic voyeurism and gonzo social science. This means spending an unreasonable amount of time inside underground forums, channels, groups, marketplaces, and other digital gathering places––observing what people sell, how they behave, what they believe, and how they organize themselves.
I publish academic research about these communities: what they do, how their markets and institutions work, and how they respond to platforms, laws, and enforcement. Gonzo Labs is where I translate that research for a broader audience, pursue unusual observations, and write more freely about what I encounter.
Topics include:
Underground communities, markets, and digital infrastructure
Cybercrime, scams, and questionable ways of making money online
Misuse of AI, including sexual imagery and political propaganda
Fake engagement, influence operations, and attention manipulation
Cryptocurrencies and gambling
Platform governance and enforcement
Why subscribe?
Each Gonzo Labs report takes you inside an unfamiliar part of the Internet and explains the people, incentives, and systems holding it together.
For general readers, the goal is to offer a clearer––and considerably stranger––understanding of life online. You may also learn a few technical details, but that is a side effect. I try to make the content accessible to a wide audience and assume little technical or subject matter expertise.
For researchers, policymakers, investigators, and industry practitioners, including people working in trust and safety, Gonzo Labs provides a ground-level view of how technology is actually used and misused. You cannot design effective interventions from the safety of a conference room.
New reports arrive about once a week, usually on Fridays, subject to the occasional interference of paper deadlines, airplanes, and reality.
Start here
Or, check out some of my academic work:
Chameleon Channels: Measuring YouTube Accounts Repurposed for Deception and Profit
Deepfake Pornography is Resilient to Regulatory and Platform Shocks
Measurement by Proxy: On the Accuracy of Online Marketplace Measurements
Do you need to reach me?
