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剥削工人政策。它累积了超过 87,000 票赞成在 Reddit 和数百万次展示截图在其他社交媒体平台上流传，周二晚上被 Reddit 版主删除。

在幕后，当记者试图证实这些说法时，这个诡计仍在继续——仍然是人工智能。

在 Reddit 上，对该帖子的评论普遍认为这些说法是真实的。

“作为一个人，我认为那些试图对不同的人对同一件事收取不同费用的公司不应该再被允许运营，”一条回复说，该回复获得了 1,800 多个赞同。

“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.

这位匿名用户上周首次在 r/confession 子社区发帖，声称尽管有“大量 NDA”或保密协议，但他们还是在揭露公司的秘密，因为他们“知道我帮助建造了这台机器，晚上睡不着觉”。

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.这位 Reddit 用户声称，该算法将为临时司机保留高薪订单，以吸引他们使用该应用程序。

随着该帖子在网上获得关注，其合法性也受到质疑。

NBC News communicated with the person behind the Reddit account 周五通过电子邮件和 Signal。当发帖者要求提供身份证明时，NBC 新闻记者发送了一张她的员工徽章照片。

几天之内，其他新闻媒体报道称，为了证明自己的公司隶属关系，发帖者向记者发送了看似 Uber Eats 优食员工徽章的东西。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.

和平台游戏, 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.Uber 发言人向 NBC 新闻证实，Uber Eats 没有员工徽章，该公司也没有采取 Reddit 帖子或用户分享的任何文件中所指控的行为。

当 NBC 新闻试图跟进该 Reddit 用户时，他们的 Signal 和电子邮件帐户似乎已被删除。

该用户没有回复后续的 Reddit 消息。

Andrew Macdonald, president and chief operating officer of Uber, wrote in关于X的声明that the post is “definitively not about us.我怀疑这完全是编造的。Don’t trust everything you read on the internet.”

DoorDash 首席执行官兼联合创始人 Tony Xu 也谴责了帖子中指控的做法。

“This is not DoorDash, and I would fire anyone who promoted or tolerated the kind of culture described in this Reddit post,” Xu写在X上。“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 an18页文件他们声称这是 Uber 内部文件。其中包括图表、图表和数学公式，这几乎愚弄了他。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.

对于牛顿来说，这个传奇提醒人们，在日益复杂和易于使用的生成人工智能时代，任何在线人都可以轻松快速地愚弄即使是最挑剔的内容消费者。

无论是曾经需要熟练的 Photoshop 工作的员工 ID，还是需要数​​小时或数天才能伪造的庞大技术文档，许多曾经很容易相信的视觉证据现在必须受到更严格的审查。

“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.

他说，人们特别容易相信和转发那些引发愤怒等情绪反应的内容。还有确认偏差的力量。

Food or grocery delivery services like DoorDash and Instacart have faced accusations of exploitation in past years, when it was revealed that they用小费来补贴工人基本工资的一部分。

Similarly, ride-share services like Uber and Lyft have faced multiple lawsuits for将司机归类为独立承包商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非法克扣司机工资并未能在纽约州提供强制性带薪病假。

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.

“我们正在寻找一些令人震惊的事情，”他说。“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.’”