Alejandro Cuevas

Alejandro Cuevas researches the parts of the Internet that don't want to be researched. Deepfakes, disinformation, darkweb marketplaces, propaganda mills, the quiet manipulation of trust. He works where the bodies are buried, methodologically speaking. His approach mixes first-person fieldwork in underground communities with large-scale computational measurement: gonzo social science. The work has led to real-world consequences, informing criminal investigations and tools for 3- and 4-letter agencies. Before landing at Princeton's Center for Information Technology Policy, he was at CMU—where he earned a Ph.D. in societal computing in 2025 under Nicolas Christin, supported by a CyLab Presidential Fellowship and a few stints at Microsoft Research studying propaganda. He's been watching a serious wave of online safety bills come into existence with complicated feelings. You can read his thoughts at gonzolabs.xyz.