Phoebe Gates reportedly knew shopping app Phia was stealing affiliate credit for months
Internal Slack messages show Phoebe Gates and Sophia Kianni were aware of the practice as far back as December, contradicting the company's public statements
Phoebe Gates and Sophia Kianni, co-founders of shopping app Phia, were aware of a practice where the app took credit for sales it didn't drive, according to internal communications. Slack messages show they knew about this as far back as December, contradicting the company's public statements.
The app, which bills itself as a "personal shopping assistant", earns commissions from retailers when users make purchases through its browser extension. However, the extension was also designed to report that Phia drove sales even when it wasn't used, resulting in increased commissions.
According to Fortune, Phia's public remarks claimed they only became aware of the situation "within the last 24 hours" on July 8, but this timeline conflicts with the internal messages. The company has not publicly commented on the discrepancy.
Brief written by urgent.news from Quartz, Fortune — 2 reports on this story. Machine-written — it may contain errors, so check the original before relying on it.
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