Unraveling the complex knot of an AI-generated hoax
Marketplace Tech
Marketplace
4.5 • 1.3K Ratings
🗓️ 22 January 2026
⏱️ 10 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In the era of AI, sometimes a story is really just too good to be true, even if the initial evidence suggests otherwise.
And as artificially engineered content becomes mainstream, journalists need to go the extra mile to verify a story’s authenticity.
Casey Newton from Platformer spoke with “Marketplace Tech” host Meghan McCarty Carino about his recent wild goose chase that ended in an AI hoax.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | It takes a lot to fool a tech reporter, but AI can get pretty close. |
| 0:07.3 | From American Public Media, this is Marketplace Tech. |
| 0:10.1 | I'm Megan McCarty Carrino. |
| 0:20.7 | Earlier this month, a post went viral on Reddit, supposedly written by a whistleblower at a food delivery app. |
| 0:27.7 | It alleged all kinds of sketchy behavior, like artificially slowing delivery times to push customers to upgrade. |
| 0:35.8 | Reporter Casey Newton at Platformer decided to check it out. |
| 0:39.6 | He started by asking the author to verify his identity |
| 0:42.7 | and received a photo of an official-looking employee badge. |
| 0:47.3 | Yeah, so he sent that over and said, |
| 0:50.6 | I hope this suffices. |
| 0:52.1 | You know, his photo and name had been blacked out. |
| 0:56.8 | But I thought, well, this is at least a starting point. |
| 1:01.0 | I asked then if there was any document that he might have that would speak to his actual |
| 1:06.2 | allegations. |
| 1:07.5 | And while he complained that that might put him at additional risk, he said he would |
| 1:10.9 | think about it. And about a day later, he messaged me again on Signal and said, I have something for you. |
| 1:16.9 | And it was an 18-page document that is probably the craziest thing a source has ever shared with me. |
| 1:23.3 | Why was it so crazy? |
| 1:25.6 | Well, one was that as I read through it, it seemed to verify not just a handful of allegations, |
| 1:33.9 | but essentially every single thing in the post. |
| 1:37.1 | It was presented as a kind of research paper that had been done by a behavioral economics group within inside the company, |
| 1:47.4 | which, you know, he was saying that this was coming from Uber. And it said that, oh, yeah, |
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