An anonymous Reddit user’s claims of fraud and theft by an unnamed food delivery company appear to have been an artificial intelligence-fueled ruse that has spread across the internet, outpacing efforts to debunk it.
The viral post, first published Friday, has elicited strong denials from major delivery apps that have been the subjects of past scrutiny for exploitive worker policies. It accrued more than 87,000 upvotes on Reddit and millions of impressions across other social media platforms where screenshots have circulated, before being removed by Reddit moderators Tuesday evening.
Behind the scenes, as reporters tried to substantiate the claims, the ruse continued — still with AI.
On Reddit, comments responding to the post generally accepted the claims as true.
“As a human I think companies that try to charge different humans different amounts for the same things should no longer be allowed to operate,” said one response, which received more than 1,800 upvotes.
“This sounds like a massive class action lawsuit if you do things right, with a high chance for the drivers to win this one,” another commenter wrote.
The anonymous user first posted to the r/confession subcommunity last week, claiming they were exposing their company’s secrets despite “a massive NDA,” or non-disclosure agreement, because they “can’t sleep at night knowing I helped build this machine.”
The user, who did not identify a company by name, claimed that their employer uses predictive modeling to lower drivers’ base pay based on their customers’ tipping habits and that it has a hidden “Desperation Score” for drivers, which tracks how “desperate” they are based on how willing they are to accept low-paying orders. The algorithm, the Reddit user claimed, would save the higher-paying orders for casual drivers to entice them to use the app.
As the post gained traction online, its legitimacy also came into question.
NBC News communicated with the person behind the Reddit account Friday via email and Signal. When the poster asked for proof of identity, an NBC News reporter sent a photo of her employee badge.
Within days, other news outlets reported that the poster, in an attempt to prove their company affiliation, had sent journalists what appeared to be an Uber Eats employee badge. The image of the badge sent to them appeared to be an almost exact copy of the photo the poster had received from NBC News, but the badge included altered details, such as an Uber Eats logo on a background matching the company’s colors.
An NBC News reporter sent a photo of her employee badge, left, and the poster sent journalists what appeared to be an Uber Eats employee badge after that, right.NBC News
The Verge and Platformer, which both reported having been given the fake badge photo, ran it through Google’s Gemini and found a SynthID watermark identifying it as having been either generated or edited by Google AI.
A spokesperson for Uber confirmed to NBC News that there are no Uber Eats employee badges and that the company does not do what is alleged in the Reddit post or in any of the documents shared by the user.
When NBC News tried to follow up with the Reddit user, their Signal and email accounts appeared to have been deleted. The user did not respond to a follow-up Reddit message.
Andrew Macdonald, president and chief operating officer of Uber, wrote in a statement on X that the post is “definitively not about us. I suspect it is completely made up. Don’t trust everything you read on the internet.”
DoorDash CEO and co-founder Tony Xu also condemned the practices alleged in the post.
“This is not DoorDash, and I would fire anyone who promoted or tolerated the kind of culture described in this Reddit post,” Xu wrote on X. “We’re not perfect by *any* stretch of the imagination, but we work every day to make our platform better for everyone who comes to it. What’s described here is appalling, and if true, whoever is operating in this manner should be ashamed.”
Platformer founder Casey Newton told NBC News that the Reddit user gave him an 18-page document that they claimed were internal Uber documents. It included charts, diagrams and mathematical formulas, which almost fooled him. But then, Newton said, he noticed peculiarities in the formatting, the language and even the way it single-handedly backed up all of the poster’s various allegations.
“It was sort of a cartoon villain’s document about how you would exploit a human being to the absolute maximum,” Newton said. Soon, he said, the red flags pointed to the entire Reddit post’s being a sham.
To Newton, the saga was a reminder of how, in the age of increasingly sophisticated and accessible generative AI, anyone online can easily and quickly fool even the most discerning content consumers.
Whether it’s an employee ID that once took skilled Photoshop work or a bulky technical document that would have taken hours or days to falsify, much of the visual evidence that once could be easily believed must now be subject to more scrutiny.
“It is really unfortunate that this post got millions of views, and I think there’s some chance that millions of people now believe that there is a delivery company that is doing all of these things,” Newton said.
People are especially vulnerable to believing and resharing content that elicits emotional reactions like outrage, he said. And there is also the power of confirmation bias.
Food or grocery delivery services like DoorDash and Instacart have faced accusations of exploitation in past years, when it was revealed that they used tips to subsidize part of their workers’ base pay.
Similarly, ride-share services like Uber and Lyft have faced multiple lawsuits for classifying drivers as independent contractors rather than employees, allowing the companies to avoid providing minimum wage, overtime pay and other benefits. In 2023, Uber and Lyft paid a combined $328 million to settle allegations that they unlawfully withheld wages from drivers and failed to provide mandatory paid sick leave in New York state.
Newton said posts like the one that went viral this week tend to be “irresistible,” because they confirm what many already believe about those companies.
“We’re looking for something to be shocked about,” he said. “And a post like this just kind of steps into that vacuum and says, ‘Hey, I’m going to give you a great Saturday morning, and now you can be super, super mad at your food delivery app.’”