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That viral Reddit post about food delivery apps was an AI scam
https://old.reddit.com/r/confession/comments/1q1mzej/im_a_developer_for_a_major_food_delivery_app_the/ https://old.reddit.com/r/confession/comments/1q1mzej/im_a_de...
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46461563 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46461563
- coloneltcb 9mo agohttps://archive.ph/56IKd https://archive.ph/56IKd
- nubinetwork 9mo agoIt sounded too fishy, but a lot of what was written does sound like something uber eats would do.
- wenc 9mo agoI took a course on critical thinking once which taught me to at least pause and ask questions when I read something sensationalist. I’ve learned that when my impulse is to say “It sounds like something X would do,” it often leads me down very wrong paths. Just because the vibes point in that direction often doesn’t mean it’s the truth. This is exactly how misinformation starts and real people pay the price for generations. Just look at the MSG (monosodium glutamate) untruth that has hurt many Chinese restaurants and Chinese Americans over the years. Misinformation is not victimless.
- OGEnthusiast 9mo agoThere's no definitive proof that the original post was AI, and it sounds very much in line with DoorDash and Uber's ethics (or lack thereof), so I'm still inclined to give the benefit of the doubt to the original post.
- minimaxir 9mo ago> it sounds very much in line with DoorDash and Uber's ethics (or lack thereof) That is quite literally why misinformation spreads.
- coloneltcb 9mo ago> sounds very much in line with perfect description of what LLMs are best at
- acheron 9mo agoSorry, if you give the “benefit of the doubt” to anything on Reddit you are going to be misinformed. Reddit was all lies before AI; it hasn’t gotten better.
- semiquaver 9mo ago> The Verge put the original 586-word Reddit post through several free online AI detectors, in addition to Gemini, ChatGPT, and Claude. The results were mixed: Copyleaks, GPTZero, Pangram, Gemini, and Claude all pegged it as likely AI-generated, but ZeroGPT and QuillBot both reported it as human-written. ChatGPT played it down the middle. Why does anyone, let alone a journalist, trust these? They are worse than useless.
- varun_ch 9mo agoCan you actually ask an LLM if content is AI-generated? Surely that wouldn't work reliably at all?
- g3f32r 9mo agoOf course you can ask an LLM if the content is AI-generated. It's easily at least 50% accurate too.
- li2uR3ce 9mo agoGiven the context of what I personally think about the content, the AI is much more accurate than that. (Is it any wonder why people fall in love with bots that always agree with them?)
- thot_experiment 9mo agoYou know, I wouldn't be surprised if the AI was less than 50% accurate. I'm not claiming that in general, but I'm also certain it would be possible to construct a dataset such that the AI would do far worse than a coin flip.
- stavros 9mo agoYou know that it's not possible to do worse than a coin flip, right? If you're getting it 100% wrong, I'll just do the opposite of what you say, and have a 100% correct predictor.
- properbrew 9mo agoReddit post in question - https://old.reddit.com/r/confession/comments/1q1mzej/im_a_developer_for_a_major_food_delivery_app_the/ https://old.reddit.com/r/confession/comments/1q1mzej/im_a_de... https://archive.ph/1XUka https://archive.ph/1XUka
- oceanplexian 9mo agoIt’s funny that the Verge thinks this is the AI scam, when literally all of Reddit is a massive AI scam and you can’t miss it if you scroll the front page for more than 10 minutes and realize the comments/upvotes/content don’t track and aren’t even remotely organic.
- Kuinox 9mo agoSo, The Verge wrote an article claiming something was generated by AI, by asking an AI. There was no investigation, they just asked an AI and published what the AI said.
- arcfour 9mo agoWell, they also provided a fake "employee badge" to the Verge, which Uber confirmed was fake.
- Kuinox 9mo agoThe wording doesn't indicate that they asked themselves. Plus, I'm finding other sources that did more investigation: https://www.hardresetmedia.com/p/an-ai-generated-reddit-post-fooled https://www.hardresetmedia.com/p/an-ai-generated-reddit-post...
- ChrisArchitect 9mo agoDiscussion on the post in question: I'm a developer for a major food delivery app https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46461563 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46461563
- yunohn 9mo agoI’m not sure if the Verge has been living under a rock, but like 80% of social media posts are rewritten by AIs these days, by the OP themselves. Heck, even a large chunk of articles and blogs too. Without making a judgement either way, that does not mean the story itself is fake.
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- NedF 9mo agoHacker News fakes posts later ( AKA the famous Dropbox post ) The best web archive is 22 hours in (.is is 2 hours with same top) and the top believes the post. Nihilist and a NPC failure to understand tech and industry[1] FTW https://web.archive.org/web/20260103035501/https://news.ycom https://web.archive.org/web/20260103035501/https://news.ycom... [1] Both programming and business logic are rubbish in the post. A childhish view of the world from people who have never been there. [edit] If Hacker News can show posts archived after they drop off page x they should do that. If Hacker News wants to pretend they are archiving history show an accessible frozen copy. If we can't delete old posts because the history matters, this does too. It wouldn't hurt to watch voting real time either over 24-48 hours. This is scrape-able if collected real time. Data project left to reader. No idea if you'd see anything. India votes different to the USA, you might see that.
- dang 9mo agoI can't make out what you're specifically saying here, but "fakes posts later" doesn't pattern-match in my mind to anything we actually do. All of things we actually do regarding re-upping posts, timestamps, and so on, I've explained many times (e.g. about timestamps here: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20timestamps%20re-up&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...), and we're always happy to answer good-faith questions. As for "the famous Dropbox post", if you mean https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863, there was nothing fake about it.
- AlexeyBelov 9mo agoRead their other comments. Why do you allow this as a mod?
- dang 9mo agoWe don't. That account has been banned for months: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45545661 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45545661. If you're seeing their other comments, it must be because you have 'showdead' turned on in your profile. Anyone is welcome to turn that on and see all the comments that have been killed for various reasons, but it's important to understand that if you do, you're signing up to see the worst that the internet brings to HN. As I mentioned at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43538728 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43538728, users sometimes forget that they turned 'showdead' on, then wonder why they're seeing such dreadful stuff in the comments. Could it be that that's what happened in this case?
- huhkerrf 9mo agoIs this the same publication that reported on the post without any hedge whatsoever? Yes, it was: https://www.theverge.com/transportation/853018/a-developer-for-a-major-food-delivery-app-says-the-algorithms-are-rigged-against-you https://www.theverge.com/transportation/853018/a-developer-f... "A developer for a ‘major food delivery app’ says the ‘algorithms are rigged against you." "There’s some debate as to whether the claims are as bad as the OP makes them seem, but it seems like there’s general agreement that the gist of the post is legit." And, yet, they don't even mention it in their original post. They haven't issued a correction. Isn't this journalism 101?
- miohtama 9mo agoWhy to retract when rage bait sells clicks.
- Corence 9mo agoFocusing on the AI content generation aspect of this is disappointing to me, since those tools are fuzzy at best and even if the post was AI generated, it isn't necessarily a red flag since the user could be trying to disguise their writing style. There are plenty of other signs this story is likely fake. The author claiming to be posting from a library on New Years' Day (most government buildings are closed) and was responding over 10 hours on the account. He's using a throwaway and a "burner laptop" at the library, but he also says he put his two weeks' notice in yesterday (also odd that this is on New Years' Eve) which would make identifying him trivial. Fake stories get to the front page of Reddit every day, I wish journalists were pointing out the actual signs not to trust something to act as a better example.
- huhkerrf 9mo agoIt was a good indication of how things like conspiracy theories spread. He gave his notice on NYE? Oh, he's probably just fudging that so he's not caught. He doesn't care about getting caught but he's on a burner laptop? Oh, people do weird things when they're stressed. And on and on. Then, of course, the ultimate fallback: Well it sounds like something they would do. So even if most of this is made up, the bad things are still probably true.
- Simulacra 9mo agoI think this is one of those occasions when the story was so good that "journalists" skipped any validation and went right to publication. Someone played the media, and they bought it hook line and sinker.
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- miohtama 9mo agoReddit, the official fact checked source of Internet. Try with some more media criticality next time.
- 1970-01-01 9mo agoFinding non-agenda driven, unbiased truth on Reddit is comparable to finding a needle in a haystack. It's a dumping ground of misinformation and a playground for bots.
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- thomassmith65 9mo agoSuppose I should revisit this: It's Reddit; of course it's fake. I do congratulate this author, though. If posted it to a different site, I would believe it. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46462027 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46462027 ...Congratulations, clanker!
- g8oz 9mo agoA side note to this: a lot of the longer highly upvoted Reddit posts in subs like /AskReddit have clearly been written with AI help. The three parallel element structure with a a splashy conclusion sentence for synthesis is a dead giveaway. I am irrationally irritated by this.
- nacozarina 9mo agothat it’s rage-inducing is not yet clearly irrational
- on_the_train 9mo agoIt has to be clarified though, that askreddits main purpose is to gather karma for new accounts. It's the only popular sub without karma thresholds. So is common knowledge to spam it with new accounts to make them usable. It's the official advice even I think
- HardwareLust 9mo agoJudging from the backlash on this, someone really wants you to know this was an "AI scam".
- sandyarmstrong 9mo agoThe Verge's article here is the least compelling. They report it with the same confidence and style as their original article when the Reddit post first made waves. I recommend reading https://www.platformer.news/fake-uber-eats-whisleblower-hoax-debunked/ https://www.platformer.news/fake-uber-eats-whisleblower-hoax... instead. It offers better reasoning, and an honest reflection about how close they were to getting taken in by the original Reddit post.
- suzzer99 9mo agoYeah this article lays it out much better than the verge. > “On the other hand, LLMs are weapons of mass fabrication,” said Alexios Mantzarlis, co-author of the Indicator, a newsletter about digital deception. “Fabulists can now bog down reporters with evidence credible enough that it warrants review at a scale not possible before. The time you spent engaging with this made up story is time you did not spend on real leads. I have no idea of the motive of the poster — my assumption is it was just a prank — but distracting and bogging down media with bogus leads is also a tactic of Russian influence operations (see Operation Overload).” Crazy new times ahead.
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- abustamam 9mo agoI think the telling part is that so many people believed it without questioning. Like there's the oft-debunked "factoid" that says that the Windows Start Menu is written in react native... While the fact itself may be false, the fact that so many people readily believed it says a lot about the start menu. If someone were to make a similar claim about something like HN was built in react then almost everyone here would instantly fact check.