← There Are No Girls on the Internet
There Are No Girls on the Internet
TikTok's DoorDash Lady Reported Being Flashed — Now She's the One Facing Charges
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- [00:00]
Bridget Todd
This is an I Heart Podcast.
- [00:02]
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- [01:05]
Bridget Todd
This is Jacob Goldstein from what's yous Problem? When you buy business software from lots of vendors, the costs add up and
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Bridget Todd
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Bridget Todd
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Bridget Todd
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- [01:38]
Bridget Todd
episode is brought to you by 20th Century Studios. The Devil Wears Prada 2 now playing in theaters 20 years after the generation defining classic Meryl Streep, Anne Hathaway, Emily Blunt and Stanley Tucci returned to the heeled streets of New York and and the halls of Runway magazine. In its next chapter. The industry has changed, scandal dominates and power always comes at a price. Don't miss The Devil Wears Prada 2 now playing in theaters. Get tickets Now. There Are no Girls on the Internet is a production of iHeartRadio and unbossed creative. I'm Bridget Todd and this is There Are no Girls on the Intern. We need to have another conversation about DoorDash lady, real name Olivia Henderson, a 23 year old DoorDash delivery driver from Oswego, New York who went viral back in October of 2025 after delivering an order to a customer that she says she found asleep on his couch, pants around his ankles exposed when she dropped off the order. So Olivia took a video, posted it to TikTok with the tag MeToo, and. And almost 30 million people watched it. Olivia's story kind of became an inkblot test for the Internet. What you saw in her story said a lot about what you already believed going into it. When I initially covered Olivia's story, I really tried to lead with empathy, which I would 100% stand by. But there's also an update, so here's where things stand now. So, this week, Olivia was indicted on two felony charges for recording that customer inside his home without his consent and posting it publicly. A grand jury reviewed the evidence and moved forward with the charges. Olivia pled not guilty and faces up to eight years in prison. Her next court date is June 5th. And I wanted to revisit our initial conversation about what happened from 2025, because I still feel like it really matters, but also wanted to make sure that y' all have the full picture before we get into. So we all know the Internet loves a viral story. It loves outrage, suspense, villains, drama, all of it. But what happens when the story is about a real woman who says that she's been the victim of a sex crime, and the platforms that ostensibly should be protecting her punish her instead? That is what happened to this woman called Livy, a doordash driver in New York state whose story recently went viral on TikTok. I wanted to talk about this on the news roundup, but honestly, I had so much to say about it that I thought this needs to be its own episode, because I think it shows us so much about where we're at right now when it comes to the state of women speaking up online. Mike, when we were talking about potentially doing an episode about this situation in the beginning, when I first started researching it, I was just curious about this story. I was seeing this story all over my TikTok feed, and I wanted to understand it better. But. But by the end of putting together my research and really doing a deep dive into what's going on here, I went from curious to pissed off and also quite worried about what this situation means for all of us. So I'm going to get into the logistics of what's going on here with this viral DoorDash story on TikTok, how AI is fueling, how we got to this place and what it all means.
- [05:10]
Mike (Co-host or guest)
It seems like a complicated story and an interesting one. I think a good one for you
- [05:15]
Bridget Todd
to tell in Some ways it is complicated, but in other ways, it's very uncomplicated tale as old as time. The most simple story that we all recognize and understand. It's. It's sort of both of those things at once. So here's what's going on. On October 12, a woman called Livy, who does doordash for a living, made a TikTok explaining that she got an order on doordash from a customer who asked her to leave the order on the porch outside. When she got to the customer's home, she says that she walks up the stairs to the porch and saw the door partially open. And inside was the customer laying across a sofa, supposedly asleep, laying motionless with his face covered and his pants and underwear down around his ankles, exposed from the waist down. I should explain some logistics here. That the way that the door on the couch is situated, there is no way that anybody walking up on this porch, like the door dasher that you thumb into your home, would not see somebody laying on the. On the couch. From where the couch is positioned. The couch that he was on is right across from the door, facing it. Like if somebody was standing on the porch and the door was open, somebody sitting on the couch, you would see each other directly. Does that make sense?
- [06:27]
Mike (Co-host or guest)
It does, yeah. And we'll link to the video in the show notes.
- [06:30]
Bridget Todd
Yeah. This episode will include some visual things. I will do my best to explain them, but this is not a video podcast, so we will put the links to the things that you need to see, but I'll make it clear what's going on even if you don't do that. So Livy's version of what I just explained is illustrated in a TikTok that she made and posted that shows her standing outside of this porch with the door open, with this man exposing himself in full view. Here's what Livy said in her TikTok.
- [07:01]
Livy (DoorDash driver)
The customer who committed a crime against me requested that their order be left at their front door. And when I arrived to their house, their front door was wide open. It was 59 degrees Fahrenheit. All of their lights were on, and they were sleeping on the couch within eyesight of the front door with their pants and underwear pulled down to their ankles. This person's name is Austin, and their last initial is N. I reported this to Door Dash and the police, and Door Dash luckily banned the customer, but the police are doing nothing. I also posted the video that I have of the proof to TikTok, and after a day and a half of it, going completely viral. TikTok took down the video for suggestive content and gave my account a strike. They've also denied my appeal to have it reinstated. I'm absolutely reposting the video again, but with a little censor blur. So it can't be removed for the same reason. Because this is literally the only justice I'm getting in the wake of my victimhood. The police are doing nothing to prevent or stop this man from doing it again, and they're not doing anything to punish him for already having done it. So if the only justice I'm going to get is the fact that he's banned off the platform and that video went viral and now he can live with that shame and embarrassment, then that's what it's gonna have to be. So tick tock, keep this video up.
- [08:21]
Bridget Todd
So Libby says that she reported this man to DoorDash, and DoorDash kicked the man off of the platform, but they also kicked her off the platform too, essentially blocking her from being able to make money. And she says that Doordash is her only source of income.
- [08:37]
Livy (DoorDash driver)
Hey, guys. So Doordash just deactivated me two days after I reported my sexual assault. Hey, guys. I just lost my job and they won't tell me why. I. They're supposed to send an email immediately after deactivation, providing you the reason why and a link to appeal, and they didn't. So I contacted support and they made me sit on the phone with them for 50 minutes just to tell me that they can't tell me the reason why, and I have to just go ahead and appeal without knowing why. So my chances of getting my account back. They have my money in that account. I was working. I was literally working, and they deactivated me.
- [09:16]
Bridget Todd
This is not.
- [09:17]
Livy (DoorDash driver)
This is related. They just punished me for posting about my sexual assault while door dashing. They just fired me, and the police are doing nothing.
- [09:31]
Bridget Todd
I lost my job and the. That was my only way to make money to pay my bills. Initially, Lydia said that Door Dash never even told her why they kicked her off the platform, Though she does say that she feels that it's connected to the TikTok that she made about this man, which, yeah, it is. DoorDash put out a statement explaining why they kicked her off the platform. Livy says they made this statement without ever actually talking to her directly about why they deactivated her account. She says that when the general public found out why she was deactivated from being on Doordash is the same time that she found out why she was deactivated. They never talked to her. They just put out this statement. Here's what Doordash said. No one should ever have to experience sexual assault, harassment, or abuse. And DoorDash never deactivates someone for reporting it, full stop. We take these reports incredibly seriously and work closely with law enforcement to investigate and support those affected. However, posting a video of a customer in their home and disclosing their personal details publicly is a clear violation of our policies. That is the sole reason why this Dasher's account was deactivated along with the customers while we investigated. Doordash also told Newsweek that they're investigating to make sure that Livy gets whatever full payments she is owed from the work she had done from Doordash because she had not been able to cash out before her account was deactivated. Though I have no idea if they're going to make good on this. It's just what they said in their statement. So Doordash is basically saying, you know, hey, we didn't deactivate Libby's account because she reported a sex crime. We deactivated her account because she posted a video of a DoorDash customer. I'll say it would have been nice if Doordash told Libby this directly rather than simply deactivating her account with money in it. But as we'll talk about in a moment, the whole dynamic of gig work is that companies like Doordash don't really have to do shit because they don't have employees, they have contractors. And so I get where Livvy is coming from, but that is sort of the nature of the beast here. So a big question that is coming up online is whether or not Livvy should have made this video in the first place. Livvy says that she had wanted video evidence of what happened. And I will say, had she come to the Internet without video evidence of what she says happened, I'm sure the conversation would have been entirely different.
- [11:45]
Mike (Co-host or guest)
Yeah, and, you know, there's something about this story that really makes one want to, like, I don't know, like, like weigh in or like, pulls you in to want to say, like, what she, you know, was she in the right. Was she in the wrong? Should she have done this or that or something about the story really pulls a person in. I think, and I. I think you're totally right that without that video, it's hard to even imagine that there would even be any story there beyond, you know, just what. What she's going through.
- [12:16]
Bridget Todd
Exactly. And a lot of people are saying oh, well, I wouldn't have an issue with what she did if she just sent that video directly to DoorDash and left it at that. Like, why did she have to post it to TikTok? And I get that Livy says that she called the non emergency police line to report this to the police. After she reported it to DoorDash, she says a police officer actually came out to speak with her about what she wanted to do. She said that she wanted to press charges, if possible, to make sure that this guy was not able to do this to another person. In one of her videos, she actually points out that this guy lives in a duplex. And she says, what if there had been a kid out on the porch on the other shared unit? And so she said that she wanted to report this to the police just to make sure that this wasn't going to be a recurring thing with this guy. But she says the police told her that she couldn't really press charges in this state because this man was in his own house and that it wasn't like he got up to lunge toward her or anything like that. So Livy says that she posted it because the police essentially weren't doing anything about it, weren't taking it seriously. But her posting that video to TikTok is what DoorDash says is the reason for her being deactivated from the platform. Honestly, I can't act like I don't see where DoorDash is coming from here, that they. That they probably can't have door dashers posting videos of their customers like this on TikTok. Now, would I have done this if I were Livy? Probably not. Because personally, at this point in my life, I almost never think that bringing something to the Internet is going to make a situation better. These days, I have only seen the Internet getting involved, making things worse. But that's just me. And, you know, not for nothing, I also don't think that anybody should be posting uncensored photos or video of other people's body without their consent. Like, I want to be clear that that's not something I think is an okay thing to be doing. And, yeah, there might be consequences for it. Again, Livy says that she was doing that in an attempt to get some kind of recourse using social media, since she says the police said there was nothing that could be done because this guy was in his own home. I get what she's saying, but I also get why her choice of posting this guy's body was without the black bar over it. On TikTok is a big source of consternation online. But I also think we really crave perfect victims, right? Victims who would act and behave exactly like we think that we would act and behave in whatever situation. So the fact that Livy is doing something that I personally would not do doesn't mean anything, right? I think that we really have this idea when we hear something like this. We think, well, what would I do? And if this person didn't do things, like I think I would do things, something must be up. She must be lying. That's a red flag. I also think the fact that Livy is on TikTok talking very loudly about this thing that happened to her. I just think people don't like that. Like, I'm sad to see that people have taken one specific bit from one of Livy's mini videos about this where she's very upset, and they've turned it into a really hurtful meme on TikTok. A man's world. I'm the victim, remember? So they've taken a screenshot, which is a close up of her face while Livy is pleading with people to remember that she is the victim in this situation. And it's been making the rounds on TikTok. If you check the comments of Livy's other posts on TikTok, people are putting that screenshot of. Of that image of her face very pained while. While speaking about this. This situation in the comments to make fun of her. Her face in this image is tortured and pained because she is very upset. And it reminds me, if you've seen that image of. It's kind of. If you googled liberal feminist triggered. It's a picture that makes her look like she is screaming. And it's an image that's become a meme when people want to reference sort of triggered angry feminist meltdown. But when you actually look at the real full video that that image was taken from, it's a. It's a feminist woman in a. At a campus debate, and she's just having a fairly normal conversation with somebody. It's a conversation that's like somewhat hostile because she's citing rape statistics or something, but she's not screaming. She barely even raises her voice in that video. The only issue is, is that she has an expressive face. And so in this image, she looks like she is screaming or having some sort of a triggered feminist meltdown. But really she's just having a pretty normal conversation with someone. I would say even like a fairly civil conversation with somebody. And yet Online, she has become the face of triggered lying feminists everywhere. Never mind that men like Alex Jones and Andrew Breitbart, like, do you remember seeing what they looked like when they would talk? They would be frothing at the mouth and screaming and veins popping out of their necks and foreheads. And fans loved it. So the rules are simply different for men. You know, Andrew Breitbart did not become the face of triggered men everywhere when he would have legit freakouts on camera.
- [17:34]
Mike (Co-host or guest)
Yeah, the. The outrage and the performative, like, energy, I think was a big part of it for those guys.
- [17:41]
Bridget Todd
Absolutely. So I think this image and clip of Livy speaking with a pained face, having a big emotion, says a lot about how we want and expect women to behave after experiencing something traumatic and how much stigma there is around labeling oneself as a victim. I also think we want victims who are quiet about what they've experienced. When someone is screaming about it, even if whatever happened to them is worth screaming about, I think for a lot of people, they automatically assume that that person screaming is in the wrong, because what we actually want is a society where women who are harmed also just shut up about it. So people are also taking issue with the fact that Livy says that she was, quote, sexually assaulted in her TikTok saying, how could someone sexually assault you if they didn't touch you? If they. If you'd ever had physical contact? This is a little bit in the weeds, but according to the office on violence against women, the term sexual assault means any non consensual sexual act prescribed by federal, tribal, or state law, including when the victim lacks capacity to consent. But in a legal sense, state laws can vary. So can the definitions used for sexual assault. So flashing or indecent exposure may be a sexual offense and a sex crime, but it is not always classified legally as sexual assault in a strict legal sense, because that depends on the state. It really strikes me as an odd thing to get hung up on this specific legal designation, the way that a lot of people have on TikTok to call Libby a liar. But I did want to mention it. And I guess I wish that all of this discourse about the technical definitions of sexual assault versus sexual offense versus sex crime was happening in an effort to educate people rather than belittle this woman who says that she was forced to look at a stranger's penis while just trying to do her job. But here we are. Like, I've seen a lot of people say Livy is lying about saying that she was sexually assaulted, and that minimizes actual sexual assault and makes it harder for actual victims. But indecent exposure is very much a sex crime, even if it is not specifically legally categorized as sexual assault. It's very clear to me that people who are bringing this up are are trying to use it to parse Livy's words to make her look like an unreliable narrator and a liar. They're not doing it in an effort to actually advocate for victims of sexualized violence. Because even if this is not legally a sexual assault the way that Libby says it is, it is still a sex crime.
- [20:12]
Mike (Co-host or guest)
Yeah, I think a good sort of test for that sort of thing is like, why don't you try it at work? Like if it's not actually any sort of a problem, just go ahead and do it at work and see what happens.
- [20:22]
Bridget Todd
Yeah, I want all of these guys who are saying it's not actually a crime. Yeah. Do it to your HR lady and see what she says. See how it goes for you. Let's take a quick break.
- [20:39]
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- [22:35]
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- [23:11]
Bridget Todd
And we're back. So Livy posts this video to TikTok and says that TikTok took action against her for uploading this video. She says the app initially removed her video and issued a strike against her account. When she initially posted it with the man with his pants down visible, she uploaded it again, obscuring the man's junk from the video. But that video was also removed and she got a second strike. Now, if it sounds like I'm being super careful and specific about how I'm describing the situation, it is. Because the entire Internet. Okay, well, not the entire Internet, but a whole hell of a lot of people have decided that Livvy is lying about what happened. Because at first it seemed like people were supporting Libby. And then something turned. And to me, it seemed like one of the many examples that we have of a woman being smeared by millions of people online for speaking up about something that she says happened to her. Right. There's a whole shade of something that we talk about a lot on the podcast when people appoint themselves as investigators to litigate the details of other people's personal lives. I think there's a lot of true crime brain rot out there that happens where people online decide that they know the real story that the rest of us aren't being told about what's happening with these strangers. And it's one of the reasons why when these stories come up, which they often do online, I am the, you know, wet blanket voice that says maybe it's not good to have millions of people jumping into the business of strangers in this way. I totally get that. It is exhilarating. Who doesn't love going down a rabbit hole of somebody else's drama. But it's one thing when we're talking about a fictional character, it's another thing when we're talking about a real everyday person. We saw it with West Elm Caleb, the guy who worked at West Elm, who met a bunch of women on a dating app and was making them all personalized playlists on Spotify to woo them. We saw it with that TikTok woman who surprise visited her long distance boyfriend and he gives her kind of a weird chilly reception and the entire Internet decided that he was cheating on her because they all became body language experts. We saw it with that Coldplay concert couple. You know, that couple who made a very weird kind of caught reaction when they were on the Jumbotron canoodling at a Coldplay concert and Coldplay frontman Chris Martin wondered out loud like, oh, they must be having an affair. Which, by the way, I have no idea if this is true, but after the hubbub died down, I read that at least one of the couples in that situation said that, yeah, I'm still legally married, but I've been separated from my spouse for a while. When that Coldplay concert happened, like my spouse is also dating, we're not together, so I know it makes me a wet blanket. But when these big moments happen that light the Internet on fire, everybody is talking about somebody else's life. I think they truly illustrate how deeply surveilled we are socially as a society, how we are doing the surveilling and we are the surveilled. And I think this is especially bad for women because when the Internet turns on women, even famous women who are the victims of abuse, people like Meg Thee Stallion or Amber Heard. It's not just speculation. It is the reliable misogyny of the Internet being so easily weaponized against her to smear her and silence her. All the old tropes around gender that we all know. Women lie for attention. Women can't be trusted. Good innocent men are having their lives ruined for over nothing by lying bitches. All of these tired old tropes that permeate how we talk about and understand gender get dialed up to 11 on social media because misogyny will always find an audience online just by the nature of how social media is designed. And this is a feature, not a bug. It is how our platforms were designed from their earliest days. I will say it till I'm blue in the face. Never forget that Facebook started as a way for Zuckerberg to get revenge on women who did not want to Date him. So this is just baked into our Internet ecosystem, and I think we really see it with how this whole Livvy situation is playing out. So after Livy shared her story, people online started saying that she is not really a victim in this situation because she did not just innocently walk up to the door, dash customer's door, and find him naked from the waist down, as she claimed. She actually walked up to a closed door, opened it without knocking and without permission, saw an undressed man asleep in his own home, took a video of him exposed, posted it online, and that she is the one who is actually violating him. That is the narrative that has really taken off online.
- [28:07]
Mike (Co-host or guest)
Well, that's odd because that is not what is depicted in that video that she posted. She. In that video she posted, she doesn't open the door. The door is already open. So where is this other narrative coming from?
- [28:22]
Bridget Todd
Great question. So one is just sort of logistical. Because Libby had to remove the original footage that she uploaded to TikTok from the platform, it has become somewhat difficult, though not impossible, to find the original video that she uploaded about the situation. And that has allowed people to really fill the gap in with their own idea of what must have happened. So if you search TikTok for DoorDash lady, doordash situation, whatever, you will find people saying with certainty that, yes, they know that Livvy pushed this closed door open. That has just become accepted as fact in this situation. When I was just doing research, somebody on a different platform threads said, oh, why is everybody. What's going on with this DoorDash situation? Somebody else replied, she opened a closed door and is acting like she's a victim because of it. I replied, can you link me to proof? How do you know this is there proof? Everybody is like, there is no proof. Everyone's just saying they've seen proof, but there is no proof. There are even people making jokey TikToks, purporting to recreate Livy's POV where she pushes open a closed door and then whines like, oh, no, I'm being assaulted by a naked man in his own home. I'm the victim. I'm posting you on TikTok because I'm the victim. I have to say some of these videos being made to make fun of Livy do seem to be AI generated. They're using AI generators like Sora. But I'm sad to say that a lot of them that I've seen are real people, real women taking the TikTok to make fun of Livy. For saying this happened to her. So it's just sort of become understood as the facts of what happened was without any proof at all that it's actually true. And importantly, there are people saying that there is another angle or that the man in this situation uploaded ring camera footage proving that Livy actually opened a closed door without his permission and was the one violating him. I kind of went down the rabbit hole on this one. You know, we talked a little bit about how with the Taylor Swift conversation, how you can just really sniff it out when a conversation happening online is not happening in a normal, authentic way. You can just tell where there are real people jumping on a bandwagon. And then also some of it is not authentic conversation. Mike, I know that when we were having a pitch meeting, I was trying to explain what was going on with what I had seen on TikTok. And I felt like when we were speaking, I felt compelled to keep reiterating to you that I was 100% stone cold sober while I was speaking about this, because I felt like the way that I was talking about it made me seem like I was not sober. Do you remember this?
- [31:15]
Mike (Co-host or guest)
Yeah, I remember you showing me a couple of videos back to back where totally different people were saying the exact same thing. Like, word for word, the exact same script about, like, I. I woke up and I saw this story and I had to get into it, but, like, word for word. And it. It was weird. It was like. Felt like. Like living in the Truman show or something. Like the algorithm was. These videos were created just to, like, convince you of something.
- [31:48]
Bridget Todd
Yes. So it is not totally uncommon for a human creator to recreate a TikTok that another human creator has made. Like, I've seen that. I know that happens, but that wasn't this. This was the same identical cadence, the same identity. It was. It was. Yeah. It was as if they were reading a script. And then I realized one of these is AI. Like, genuinely, I thought I was going crazy until I saw this TikTok that broke it down.
- [32:16]
Odoo / Mistr Ad Voice
Everybody's talking about the DoorDash girl. I was looking at certain videos and I came across this one.
- [32:20]
Bridget Todd
I saw the original video of the doordash Girl. And I'm a little bit confused now that I woke up and see everything that's happen. When I saw it, I said, hey, I understand why Door Dash, I guess, fired you and why you're a block from the now. As for the guy, that's a little weird, right?
- [32:34]
Odoo / Mistr Ad Voice
Why are they saying the same thing in a very similar tone? And a very similar cadence.
- [32:37]
True Nature Meats / T Mobile / LifeLock Ad Voice
Is there a script?
- [32:38]
Odoo / Mistr Ad Voice
Is somebody copying somebody? Or is that video on the right AI? It's an AI and not just that video. Her entire page is artificial intelligence generated video. Okay, now when you look at the page, you can kind of tell it's just gibberish. There's no, there's no, like links or anything, no name. But when you just scroll by these videos, it's pretty hard to tell unless you're really paying attention to how she speaks.
- [32:58]
Bridget Todd
And it gets even weirder because mu URLs on TikTok, who is a human TikToker on TikTok says that somebody stole her likeness, stole her voice, generated an AI version of her to make it appear as though she weighed in on this doordash situation when she did it. I would not have known that this was an AI clone of a real person unless I really, really looked. If I'm swipe, swipe, swiping, I don't think I would have clocked that this is AI if I had not also come across this woman saying, hey, this isn't me. It's an AI clone of me that somebody has made. Please report it. So you can really see how the proliferation of AI can turbocharge manipulated inauthentic conversation about a hot button charged topic, even when it's not about a big celebrity like Taylor Swift, but a regular person like Livy.
- [33:53]
Mike (Co-host or guest)
I really think slash hope that there will be a time in the future when we look back at this era when it's totally legal and fine for whoever to be creating all these AI generated videos that just like steal people's likenesses, purport to be real people even though they're not. And just like flooding the information ecosystem that we all have to live in, just flooding that with these fake accounts that are not fake, but like inauthentic that are purporting to be real humans when they are not. And it's just, it's just like fine, like the platforms don't really care. It's totally legal. It's not sustainable. And so I, I really think at some point in the future we're going to look back at this time and just like shake our heads. And I can't wait to get to that future.
- [34:46]
Bridget Todd
Yes. And what's so interesting to me is the woman who was cloned, the real woman, really put it well that this is a credibility issue. She. If you, if you are a big tiktoker and you make your living like I'm a podcaster, I make My living, putting my ideas out into the world, expressing myself, using my voice. If somebody cloned me, which please don't do that. If you're listening and you're thinking, I'm gonna make a Bridget clone, please don't. But if somebody did, that could materially harm me as somebody whose credibility and body of work depends on people being able to trust me. People being able to take what I say as something they should be listening to to help them understand the world. If somebody steals my voice and my likeness to just say whatever, to weigh in on things that I would never weigh in on, or put ideas out into the world that I would never express that could materially harm me in a real way.
- [35:40]
Mike (Co-host or guest)
Yeah, that's not like some new concept. Like we've had laws about that sort of thing for many, many years, right? You can't just like impersonate someone else. Like, obviously there are laws against that in the offline world, but somehow with this new technology, people are acting like it's fine, even though it's like the exact same dynamic and the exact same risk.
- [36:04]
Bridget Todd
But what if you could impersonate somebody else and make a little change doing it? Then what? See, the thing is here, companies like OpenAI are making money. So what if you could do it and it was okay and it was legal?
- [36:19]
Mike (Co-host or guest)
You know, it does get engagement, so the people want it. So counterpoint.
- [36:26]
Bridget Todd
So the conversation about Doordash lady has really gotten out of hand with AI clones and bots being weaponized and lies and images being manipulated. But to be clear, I don't think this is some big conspiracy where DoorDash is buying bots and AI clones to manipulate the conversation around what happened here. It is possible, and I don't put anything past a corporation. If you ever think a company wouldn't do something absolutely fucking unhinged to protect their bottom line, look into one of the weirdest stories I have ever covered on this podcast, which is the ebay stalking and harassment case where high level ebay executives were arrested for a years long harassment campaign against an elderly couple where they were doing things like putting dead animals in their mailbox to harass them out of running a blog about ebay. Right? So if you ever think, oh, executives don't do shady stuff to protect their business interests, they wouldn't do that. They would. So I'm not saying this because I think it's a bridge too far that a company would buy and exploit AI clones and bots to manipulate a situation, but my gut is telling me that what's going on here is just an engagement thing. It is possible that DoorDash is running this complex bot and AI campaign to smear Livy. But I think what is probably more likely is that these bots and AI clones are jumping on any trending big topic that people are talking about on social media and that they don't care if it's based on amplifying lies about a real woman. And that is what pisses me off and worries me so much about this story that we have reached a point where there is an entire slate of digital tools, including AI, that can be used to discredit somebody who says that they were the victim of a sex crime. Because I've seen AI generated ring camera footage that supposedly exonerates this man and proves that Livy opened this door, but it's not real. I've seen manipulated photos that purport to exonerate this man. That is an image of this man's front door that has obviously been cropped in such a way to make the door look a lot less open than Livy's footage initially showed. So it seems like, oh, well, the door was open just a tiny bit, but they've cropped it to make it look that way. And because Livy's original footage was taken down from TikTok, it's a little bit harder for people to go back and compare it with what she actually posted. Then you have obvious bot accounts amplifying and repeating these claims to the point where they've just become true online, whether or not they actually happened or not. I've talked about how my ethos on this show is that I'm a nosy bitch, and I just want to get to the bottom of what's going on. So, nosy bitch that I am, I have searched high and low for any additional footage, ring camera footage, other angles, whatever, whatever. All of this stuff that people in bots say they have seen online that exonerates this man and proves that Livy is in the wrong. I have not seen a stitch of evidence. It just doesn't match the smell test with me. People upload videos on TikTok and delete them, and there's always somebody that gets the screenshot. There's always somebody that gets a screen recording of it. The fact that there would not be a stitch of evidence for this video that so many people have said that they saw with their own eyes, that exonerates this man. I just don't believe that it's out there. It is possible that it is, but I tell you I have not. If it exists, I have. I have searched high and low. I have not seen it. The only video footage of the situation that I have found is the footage that Livy took initially, which backs up her version of what she says happened. More after a quick break.
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- [42:14]
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- [42:50]
Bridget Todd
Let's get right back into it now. I want to be clear. It is entirely possible that Livy did push that door open and then whip out her phone and start filming to make a video that backs up her version of events. It's entirely possible that that happened. We have no way of knowing for sure. I am a mere spectator here, just like everybody in this situation. But to me, that makes absolutely no sense, just doesn't pass muster.
- [43:21]
Mike (Co-host or guest)
Earlier in this episode, you talked about how this whole story, one of the things that shows is how surveilled we all are. And I think that's a good insight. And part of that fact of life these days is that there's an expectation of surveillance that, of course, there's going to be multiple camera angles and there's, like, more footage from somewhere else. And, you know, I have to wonder if that maybe is part of why people are so, like, eager to believe that this. The other footage is out there. Because, you know, this thing happened and there's a lot of interest about it. And so, of course, there has to be more footage when, in fact, most things that happen in the world do not get recorded on video.
- [44:06]
Bridget Todd
Yeah. But again, I think it goes back to that true crime brain rot where people assume everything is going to happen the way it would happen in a fictional movie or a fictional series. And in reality, there probably isn't going to be any, you know, extended footage that she didn't know was being recorded that comes out. It could happen, but I feel like if it was going to happen, it would have happened already. Right? We have the footage that we have is the footage that we have. And, you know, this claim that Livy pushed the door open herself, you know, that my forever problematic fave is Judge Judy. She's one of my heroes. I think she's the best. She has this thing that she says where she says if something doesn't make sense, it's because it's not true. And to believe that Livy pushed that door open herself, you would have to believe a lot of things that just, to me, don't make any sense. So the door was either open or the door was closed. If it was open, then Livy's story and the results that followed all make sense, checks out. Got it. But if the door was closed, like people on the Internet would have you believe to exonerate this man, that means that Livy, as a Door. Dasher walked up to a closed door with an order rather than leaving the order on the porch as she was instructed to do. For some reason, opened this closed door without permission or on the off chance that there might be a man exposing himself in there. And jackpot. Could you believe it? There was. What are the odds? Then took out her phone, started recording. Recorded it in such a way that made it seem like that door had just been open. Posted it to the Internet just to get hordes and hordes of negative attention that led to her losing her only source of income. Why? What would be the end game like? It just does not make sense. And when you add in the fact that we know that women lying about things like sexual violence is statistically very uncommon, I think that most studies estimate that false report rates are something between 2% and 8%. The overwhelming majority of reports of sexual violence or misconduct are true. But when you already have a narrative in your head that women lie about sexual abuse for attention, which the Internet definitely adds to, none of that reality makes any sense. It all just goes right out the window. And I think it illustrates how people will believe absolutely anything without proof to validate this worldview about women and support a worldview where people don't speak up when something like this happens to them. If the entire Internet is going to come together and use this arsenal of AI tools to discredit a survivor of sexualized violence, less and less people are going to come forward. And I have to think that is the point of all of this. And here is something that I just have to add and have to say. A lot of people on TikTok are saying, hey, this guy was just drunk or high, passed out in his own home. Even if he did have the door open, he didn't really do anything wrong. So obviously, as I said, I don't know any more about this situation than anybody else does. I'm just watching it from the sidelines. But come on. Women know when a man is trying to expose himself to get his sexual kicks. We know. I have had strangers expose themselves to me twice in my life. The first one happened when I was maybe 15. A man. I was walking down the street outside of my high school, and a man called me over and was like, I'm in his car and was like, I'm. Can you help me? I'm lost, looking for directions. He had a map unfolded out on his lap, and when I came over, he moved the map and exposed himself to me. And it wasn't a misunderstanding. It wasn't ambiguous. I didn't like misunderstand something. I knew exactly what was going on instantly right away. Women know when a man is trying to do this. The fact that people are rushing in to give this man the benefit of the doubt, I think is really discounting the reality that women live in where this kind of thing happens. I have to wonder if the men who are saying, oh, this is totally normal behavior, even if he did leave the door open and have his self exposed, it's not that big of a deal. I think that they are trying to create the conditions where if they did that or something similar, it wouldn't be a big deal. That's the only reason I could think why you would jump to normalize. What I think we all can sort of see is like not normal behavior. So again, this is just my opinion, but you're not going to be able to convince me that somebody who summoned a doordasher to their home just happened to be waiting adjacent from the porch that they summoned them to with their pants down. I'm unwilling to believe this was not purposeful. This is my opinion. But it is backed up by so much research about what we know women experience who are doing gig work because gig work, things like Lyft, Uber, Uber Eats, doordash. It's just like this for women. A study by University of British Columbia interviewed 20 women gig workers in home services, food delivery and rideshare in the US and Canada and found that women often experience harassment, unwanted sexual comments or behavior, feel unsafe and face limited recourse. One woman they spoke to put it like this. She just said, is it worth it? Most of the time it's not. So you just don't. Their study also found that women just brush off harassment because of things like rating systems where if they get enough bad ratings they'll be kicked off the platform. Fear of retaliation. All of that leads to women just brushing off this kind of harassment. That same research highlights that platforms often have gender agnostic design in that the systems do not account for women's specific vulnerabilities and that gender agnostic design just leads to women workers opting out of riskier time. So saying I'm not going to go to this. I'm not going to. I'm going to not take this order if it's dark out or if it's in a bad neighborhood or something like that, which then worsens income gaps. A separate study by the Markup found that among APP based drivers in Chicago, a high percentage felt unsafe and that female drivers reported higher rates of sexual harassment. Another UK based study found that while app based couriers, who are mostly male, faced harassment and assault, female couriers had particular difficulties accessing reporting mechanisms and felt less supported. So the research about women in gig work pretty much backs up what most of us anecdotally probably already knew, that this kind of sexualized harassment and abuse of women gig workers is not rare. It's actually an occupational hazard recognized by scores of research. That's why I didn't want to say Livy was fired from doordash, really, because in the gig economy, it just comes with a lot less support for workers, especially workers who are women who are victims of sexualized abuse while working. That's kind of the nature of the beast with the gig economy. There's a lot less support structures, things like reporting and deactivation protections and retaliation protections. And when they do have these things, they're pretty inconsistent. The design of the gig economy, you have people who these companies say are independent contractors, not employees. Things like app rating systems and algorithmic dispatch often puts workers in vulnerable positions where they have less insight and don't have access to things like formal hr. You know, humans, we know, can be pretty variable in these uncontrolled environments. On top of that, you have this power asymmetry baked in, right, where the worker risks losing access to the platform or is getting bad ratings that they complain where they might get kicked off of this, of this app that is a source of income for them that they need. And so all of this makes it a perfect environment for the kind of thing that Livvy says that she experienced while doing doordash. And so while all these big creators on TikTok are arguing that Livvy pushed this door open without permission to engineer this whole thing to make herself an online victim, My question is, what is more likely that Livy manipulated this whole situation just to get attention online and make herself sound like a victim online, or that this guy was sexually harassing a woman gig worker in a way the research could not make clearer is incredibly commonplace for women who do this kind of work. And so my question is, why are we not talking about what we know about the risks and lack of support for women in the gig economy like Livy? In a different social media landscape, that would be the conversation we will be having. But I think it's a lot more lucrative to instead talk about how Livy is a liar who is lying for attention on the Internet and the man who exposed himself to a gig worker did nothing wrong. Because if there's one Thing that this moment with Livy has showed me about the Internet, especially big accounts on platforms like TikTok and honestly across every platform is that they will straight up lie about a woman who says that she was a victim of sexual abuse if it gets them clicks. And that is a problem. These people are materially benefiting from lying about Livy. There is money in outrage. There's clout in being the first one to jump on a story whether or not it's true. I saw somebody with lots and lots and lots of followers say that Livy had been arrested for a false report, for falsely calling 911 to report this man to the authorities. Keep in mind, Livy herself said that she called a non emergency line and that a police officer actually showed up to have a conversation with her about it. So why would she have been arrested for that? She doesn't make any sense. People will just get on this platform and lie to millions of people and they are financially incentivized to do so. They don't care about whether or not what they are saying is true. They don't care about context and they don't care about helping anybody understand what. What is actually happening here, what actually went on. They only care about engagement. Even if that means lying about somebody who is already going through something awful. And when that person is a woman, the algorithm practically throws a goddamn party. I started researching this story because I just wanted to know what was going on. I was curious. But the more and more videos I watched of people with huge platforms and lots and lots of followers across the Internet saying things about Livy that are lies or are just completely unsubstantiated and not backed up by anything that's pulled out of whole cloth. It really pissed me off.
- [54:49]
True Nature Meats / T Mobile / LifeLock Ad Voice
So she gets online and makes up a story that she was essayed by this gentleman. And it's just come out today that she was lying about it, that the man was asleep, had passed out on the couch and his pants were just happened to be down a little bit. So she walked into this man's house without his permission, saw him on the couch and started taking photos of him and then sent those photos to her boss claiming that this man that was passed out assaulted her. First of all, did she just give the worst name to false accusing men of that? Which you should never do because now you'll never be trusted. This is like if I was that dude, I would sue doordash for millions and millions and millions of dollars. And that girl, she's not going to be able to show her face in public ever again.
- [55:47]
Bridget Todd
And I say this to say that misogyny always finds an audience online. It is reliable. It performs. It puts money in pockets and butts in seats, saying, she's lying, she's crazy, she just wants attention. All of those old stereotypes, dusting them off and redoing them for the Internet age will always do numbers. And that is what is so dangerous about this. Because it doesn't just pile on one woman who got deactivated from doordash. It sends a message to everyone that women who call out creepy behavior, threatening behavior, illegal behavior should just shut up. That the men who do this kind of thing deserve protection, even if that means lying for them, making AI generated or manipulated content to support and exonerate them, and inventing facts out of whole cloth to excuse their behavior. And when you step back and look at this in a bigger picture, the political and social moment that we're in right now, where our rights are being literally rolled back, the fact that social media can be so easily gamified and weaponized to silence women should really scare the hell out of us. Because if the algorithm keeps on rewarding misogyny and lies and cruelty and punish people who are just trying to speak up, and if we keep letting online engagement be the arbiter of what is real and what is not, then it is not just going to be women like Livy who lose. It's going to be all of us. Got a story about an interesting thing in tech or just want to say hi? You can reach us@helloangodi.com youm can also find transcripts for today's episode@tangodi.com There are no Girls on the Internet was created by me, Bridget Todd. It's a production of iHeartRadio and Unboss Creative. Jonathan Strickland is our executive producer. Tari Harrison is our producer and sound engineer. Michael Amato is our contributing producer. I'm your host, Bridget Dodd. If you want to help us grow, rate and review us on Apple Podcasts for more podcasts from iHeartRadio, check out the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [58:06]
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