USA Times Data Desk
The USA Times Data Desk is the newsroom’s data and investigations unit. It collects prices, fees and public records directly from the source, verifies them item by item, and builds the charts and tables behind USA Times investigations. Every figure it publishes is traceable to a named, dated source.
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New York Makes Apps Confess When an Algorithm Priced You. We Caught DoorDash Disclosing It — and Found the Carve-Out That Shields Uber and Lyft
Since Nov. 10, 2025, New York requires apps to state “this price was set by an algorithm using your personal data.” We found DoorDash disclosing it — and a carve-out that leaves Uber and Lyft ride fares largely untouched.
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New York Says Uber Eats and DoorDash Used ‘Design Tricks’ to Cut Delivery Workers’ Tips by $554 Million
A city report found the two apps buried the tip prompt — and tips cratered to $0.76 a delivery while rivals held at $2.17. It’s the worker-side mirror of the delivery economics we’ve been documenting.
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The FTC Is Finally Moving on Hidden Delivery-App Fees — and Our Own NYC Audit Shows Exactly What It’s Looking For
The FTC opened a nationwide rulemaking on deceptive food- and grocery-delivery fees. USA Times spent months pricing the same food on the apps and at the counter — here’s what we found.
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NPR: A Case Study in Presidential Coverage
Final census: 21,904 NPR URL/headline records explicitly name the sitting U.S. president by surname across Obama’s second term, Trump’s first term, Biden’s term and Trump’s second term through July 17, 2026. The wording is measurably more negative for both Trump periods, but lexical sentiment alone does not establish partisan bias or answer whether public funding…
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Surveillance Pricing, Explained: When the Price Is Built Around You
The price on your screen may no longer be a fact about the product — it may be a fact about you. A plain-English guide to surveillance pricing, what the FTC and Consumer Reports found, and the New York law that forces some companies to disclose it.
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Why Uber Eats Won’t Put It in One Number
You pay three charges on every Uber Eats order — a delivery fee, a service fee, and a markup on the food you never see. Two of the three are Uber’s cut for the same thing: being the middleman. Here’s why Uber won’t just put it in one honest number.