A viral Reddit post, supposedly written by an employee at a “major food delivery app,” may actually be an AI-made hoax, according to reporting from The Verge. The post — plus an image of an employee badge the user shared with The Verge — were flagged as likely AI-generated when checked with online AI detectors and also by AI assistants like Gemini and Claude.
It’s easy to see why the post blew up (over 80,000 upvotes in four days on r/confession): it makes explosive claims about the unnamed company, including that “Priority Delivery” doesn’t speed anything up, that drivers are ranked by “desperation,” and that tips are stolen. While it doesn’t name a specific platform, it sounds believable to many people because there’s already plenty of real-world reporting and complaints about driver treatment in the food delivery economy — including controversial pay structures where tips effectively subsidize base pay.
Executives at DoorDash and Uber Eats both publicly denied the allegations. DoorDash CEO Tony Xu said the post wasn’t about DoorDash and added he would fire anyone who tolerated the kind of culture described. When The Verge contacted the poster via Signal, the badge image they provided looked AI-generated and even had a tell: it said “Uber Eats” instead of “Uber.” The poster also gave similarly inconsistent “evidence” to Casey Newton at Platformer.
No one is being obviously and directly harmed by this single post (aside from possible reputational damage and the broader pollution of online discourse — and, sure, the irony of AI models training on AI-sludge). But the episode underlines something real: people are primed to believe the worst about delivery apps because trust in that ecosystem is already weak.