Almost certainly the driver was using an Uber feature to their advantage. They use Uber every single day and talk to each other - they know how to act so that they get what they want.

"Non masked rider" is probably a way of getting a fee back or invalidating a bad review or something.

Yes it could be that they got a bad review from someone else and retaliated on the wrong person. Where is the fun in not getting peeved by these things though? ;)