Consumer Reports, a lion of public-service journalism that can claim, among other things, to have spread early awareness of the dangers of cigarettes in the 1950s, announced on Thursday the creation of a Digital Lab division. Built on the gift from Mr. Newmark’s foundation, the lab will be crash-testing not cars but the digital tools that have become a part of everyday life.

Marta L. Tellado, the Consumer Reports chief executive, said the lab would allow the publication, known for its rigorous, impartial critiques, to apply its longstanding principles to a new set of consumer problems.

“Companies like Google and Facebook have shown that while they’re offering great conveniences, they aren’t always policing themselves, and a lot of our laws are not keeping pace with innovations,” Ms. Tellado said.

The new Digital Lab is not the first foray by Consumer Reports into monitoring tech. In 2017, it led a consortium that established the so-called Digital Standard, a benchmark against which products can be measured. Samsung recently fixed certain smart televisions after Consumer Reports, applying the standard, found they could be hacked. In another instance of digital oversight, it made clear to Google users how they could easily delete their search histories.

“Consumer Reports are the right people to continue doing the work they’ve always been doing,” Mr. Newmark said in an interview. “It’s just that new technologies are more pervasive and invasive than other technologies.”