"Those claims were, unfortunately, believable - DoorDash actually was sued for stealing tips from drivers, resulting in a $16.75 million settlement. But in this case, the poster had made up his story. People lie on the internet all the time. But it's not so common for such posts to hit the front page of Reddit, garner over 87,000 upvotes, and get crossposted to other platforms like X, where it got another 208,000 likes and 36.8 million impressions."
"Casey Newton, the journalist behind Platformer, wrote that he contacted the Reddit poster, who then contacted him on Signal. The Redditor shared what looked like a photo of his UberEats employee badge, as well as an eighteen page "internal document" outlining the company's use of AI to determine the "desperation score" of individual drivers. But as Newton tried to verify that the whistleblower's account was legitimate, he realized that he was being baited into an AI hoax."
""For most of my career up until this point, the document shared with me by the whistleblower would have seemed highly credible in large part because it would have taken so long to put together," Newton wrote. "Who would take the time to put together a detailed, 18-page technical document about market dynamics just to troll a reporter? Who would go to the trouble of creating a fake badge?""
A Reddit poster claimed to be a whistleblower for a food-delivery app, alleging the company exploited drivers, stole tips and used AI to score driver desperation. The post included a supposed employee badge and an 18-page internal document describing a "desperation score." The claim resonated because the company had faced tip-theft litigation and a $16.75 million settlement. The post went viral across Reddit and X, accumulating tens of thousands of upvotes and millions of impressions. Verification efforts revealed the poster fabricated the evidence and lured a reporter into an AI-enabled hoax, showing how realistic fabrications can spread rapidly online.
Read at TechCrunch
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