Amazon drivers say Mentor, the company's app to track drivers and score their driving, is invasive and its bugs can lead to unfair disciplinary action
here's what they say about it - by @annierpalmer https://www.cnbc.com/... Kif / @kifleswing : Amazon outsources the development of an app that tracks its contract delivery drivers and their driving habits. (You'd think that logistics and app development would be core competencies at Amazon) https://www.cnbc.com/... Annie Palmer / @annierpalmer : New: I spoke to Amazon delivery drivers about an app they use called Mentor, which is framed as a driver safety tool, but ends up wreaking havoc in their day-to-day lives on the job due to consistent bugs and the pressures of being constantly monitored. https://www.cnbc.com/... @alfredwkng : Amazon is tracking its drivers through an app but doesn't give them a work phone. Some drivers have to keep the tracking app on their personal devices and give it location data at all times: https://www.cnbc.com/... https://twitter.com/... Lauren Feiner / @lauren_feiner : Drivers for Amazon told @annierpalmer that the company's “driver safety app” is invasive and can lead to unfair disciplinary action. https://www.cnbc.com/... Thanks: @mattrosoff
Context & Ripple Effects
CNBC's reporting lands mid-arc in Amazon's driver-surveillance buildout: weeks earlier, the company began forcing delivery drivers to sign a biometric consent form covering AI-powered cameras aimed at detecting distracted driving, and by March five senators including Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren had formally asked Amazon about that camera program. Mentor extends the same logic to contract drivers' phones — an app framed as a safety tool that also scores every trip.
What makes the story more than a grievance piece is who built it: per the reporting, Amazon outsourced Mentor's development rather than building it in-house, so the scoring layer governing drivers' livelihoods sits outside the company's own engineering control. That gap between monitoring ambition and software quality is exactly what drivers say produces unfair discipline.
First-order effects
- Contract delivery drivers face immediate career risk from buggy scores: a mis-recorded trip can feed disciplinary action with little recourse, since the app is positioned as the authoritative record of their driving.
- Amazon's outsourced development of Mentor means the company's delivery network now runs on a third-party-built scoring tool whose defects Amazon must answer for to drivers, its delivery partners, and regulators.
Second-order effects
- The backlash inverted the tool's purpose within months — by May, drivers reported Amazon's US delivery companies were ordering them to turn Mentor off, suggesting the safety app was degrading the very behavior it was meant to police.
- Congressional attention broadened from cameras to the whole monitoring stack: the senators' inquiry into AI-equipped driver cameras set a template for scrutinizing every algorithmic layer, including Mentor-style scoring apps.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, algorithmic management becomes the contested terrain of gig logistics: Bloomberg's interviews with Flex drivers showed algorithms already hiring, rating, and firing with minimal human oversight, and Mentor adds driving scores to that stack.
- Scoring systems may end up judging the scorers — the Wall Street Journal later found Amazon's regular trucking contractors were more than twice as likely as other companies to draw unsafe-driving scores, fueling arguments that such metrics measure the employer's system as much as the worker.
The trend: Workplace algorithmic surveillance in logistics is scaling faster than its accuracy and accountability mechanisms, turning driver-facing monitoring tools into labor-relations flashpoints that draw both congressional scrutiny and operational walk-backs.