A popular Reddit thread accusing a food delivery service of fraud was later revealed to have been created by artificial intelligence

Viral Reddit Food Delivery Whistleblower Revealed as Fraud

A Reddit post that quickly gained traction, supposedly authored by a whistleblower from a major food delivery service, has been exposed as a fabrication. The user’s viral confession alleged that the company was taking advantage of both its drivers and customers.

“Many of you believe the algorithms are stacked against you, but the truth is even more disheartening than the rumors,” the self-proclaimed insider claimed.

The poster described being intoxicated and using a library’s public Wi-Fi to write a lengthy rant, accusing the company of exploiting legal loopholes to withhold drivers’ tips and wages without consequence.

While such accusations seemed plausible—DoorDash, for example, faced a lawsuit over tip theft and paid a $16.75 million settlement—this particular story was entirely fabricated.

Although online deception is nothing new, it’s rare for a false narrative to reach Reddit’s front page, amass over 87,000 upvotes, and spread to other platforms like X, where it received 208,000 likes and 36.8 million views.

Journalist Uncovers the Hoax

Casey Newton, the journalist behind Platformer, reached out to the Reddit user, who responded via Signal. The individual provided what appeared to be an UberEats employee badge and shared an 18-page “internal report” describing how the company used AI to assign “desperation scores” to drivers. However, as Newton dug deeper, he realized he was being targeted by an elaborate AI-generated ruse.

“Earlier in my career, a document like the one I received would have seemed highly credible, simply because of the effort required to produce it,” Newton reflected. “Who would invest so much time in crafting a detailed, technical report just to mislead a journalist? Who would bother creating a fake employee badge?”

The Challenge of Detecting AI-Generated Deception

While attempts to mislead journalists are nothing new, the rise of AI tools has made verifying information even more challenging.

Modern generative AI often struggles to distinguish between authentic and synthetic images or videos, making it difficult to confirm the legitimacy of digital content. In this instance, Newton used Google’s Gemini and its SynthID watermarking technology to determine that the image was AI-generated, as the watermark remains detectable even after cropping, compression, or filtering.

Combating AI Misinformation

Max Spero, founder of Pangram Labs, develops tools to identify AI-generated text and works directly on the problem of distinguishing authentic content from fakes.

“The amount of AI-generated junk online has increased dramatically, partly due to the widespread use of large language models,” Spero told TechCrunch. “Some companies, with millions in revenue, pay for so-called ‘organic engagement’ on Reddit, which often means trying to go viral with AI-created posts that mention their brand.”

While detection tools like Pangram can help flag AI-written text, they are less effective with multimedia content. Even when a fake post is exposed, it may have already gone viral, spreading misinformation before the truth emerges. As a result, users are left to sift through social media with a skeptical eye, constantly questioning what’s real.

Multiple AI Hoaxes Go Viral

To illustrate the confusion, when the author mentioned covering the “viral AI food delivery hoax on Reddit this weekend” to an editor, the editor assumed it was a different incident. In fact, there were multiple viral AI-driven food delivery hoaxes circulating on Reddit at the same time.

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