{"id":6921,"date":"2026-07-11T23:10:50","date_gmt":"2026-07-11T16:10:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/daiilynews.cu.ma\/?p=6921"},"modified":"2026-07-11T23:10:50","modified_gmt":"2026-07-11T16:10:50","slug":"bill-gates-daughter-under-fire-as-ai-app-accused-of-using-fake-clicks-to-make-money","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/daiilynews.cu.ma\/?p=6921","title":{"rendered":"Bill Gates’ daughter under fire as AI app accused of using ‘fake clicks’ to make money"},"content":{"rendered":"


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Phia, which was co-founded by Phoebe Gates and Sophie Kianni, was found to use ‘fake clicks’ to claim sales it didn’t drive, in violation of many digital platforms’ policiesBill Gates with his daughter, Phoebe(Image: AFP via Getty Images)Bill Gates’ daughter has faced criticism after the startup she co-founded was accused of using “fake clicks” to make money.Phoebe Gates and her former Stanford University roommate Sophie Kianni launched their startup Phia, an AI-powered fashion-tech shopping assistant, last year. Available as a browser extension and iOS mobile app, Phia allows its users to scan thousands of retail and resale stores simultaneously to find the lowest prices, discover discount codes, and source sustainable alternatives.Similar businesses usually collect a commission from retails that make the resulting sale. In addition to Phia, the Microsoft founder’s daughter and her best friend also launched The Burnouts, a popular business and career podcast.Operating out of New York City, the company has experienced rapid financial growth. Phia has raised $43.5 million in venture capital, pushing its market valuation to approximately $185 million.However, this week the company became the subject of heavy industry scrutiny following a Bloomberg investigation. Independent technical testing from researcher Ben Edelman and Capital One Shopping revealed that Phia’s browser extension was engaging in a practice known as “cookie stuffing.”Phia is an AI-powered fashion-tech shopping assistant(Image: PHIA)She co-founded the company(Image: GC Images)The tool was found to be quietly opening background tabs during user checkout to inject its own referral codes. This allowed the company to wrongfully claim affiliate marketing commissions and take credit for online retail sales it did not actually drive. Following the report, Phia was temporarily suspended from Impact.com, a major affiliate network.”The most fundamental requirement in affiliate marketing is that commission is only paid if a user clicks,” Edelman told Bloomberg after reviewing Phia’s code, which is public, and testing how the extension interacts with retailers’ websites and affiliate networks. “The rules don’t allow fake clicks, simulated clicks, imaginary clicks or hypothetical clicks. Only a real click will do.”Capital One Shopping, a discount shopping tool, also raised concerns about “fake clicks” or “cookie stuffing.” Back in 2018, the company had said in an email to Bloomberg that through fake clicks, “Publishers like us are having material revenue taken. And advertisers like you are losing money to fake clicks.” While Bloomberg reported that Capital One Shopping confirmed the authenticity of the email, it said the company declined to comment on the specific case of Phia.A spokesperson for Phia issued a public statement clarifying that the misattributions were caused by a bug in a recent codebase release. The company stated that their engineering team worked overnight to completely mitigate and resolve the issue as soon as they were notified.The Gates family – Melinda, Jennifer, Phoebe, Rory and Bill(Image: Bill Gates\/Facebook)”Within the last 24 hours, we were made aware that in a recent release our codebase was causing misattributions from a subset of users,” the spokesperson said. “As soon as we were notified, our team worked overnight to identify, mitigate, and has since resolved the issue.”Last year, during an appearance on the Call Her Daddy podcast, Phoebe described her nepo baby privilege as “difficult.” Host Alex Cooper bluntly asked Phoebe, “Phoebe, you, coming from a place of privilege, your dad being Bill Gates, did you ever feel like it’s been difficult to make a name for yourself and really carve your own path and not just be Bill Gates’ daughter?”Young entrepreneur Phoebe, who is the youngest child of Bill and his wife, Melinda Gates, replied, “Yeah. I think 100%, but the tough thing is it’s like, yeah. That’s difficult, but it comes with so much privilege, right? I didn’t have to fight for a scholarship in college. I knew my college was gonna be paid for. I had incredible opportunities because of my parents. If I didn’t have my parents as my rock, I wouldn’t have been able to have these incredible opportunities, so yes.”
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Phia, which was co-founded by Phoebe Gates and Sophie Kianni, was found to use ‘fake clicks’ to claim sales it didn’t drive, in violation of many digital platforms’ policiesBill Gates with his daughter, Phoebe(Image: AFP via Getty Images)Bill Gates’ daughter has faced criticism after the startup she co-founded was accused of using “fake clicks” to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6922,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[99],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6921","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/daiilynews.cu.ma\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6921","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/daiilynews.cu.ma\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/daiilynews.cu.ma\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/daiilynews.cu.ma\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/daiilynews.cu.ma\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6921"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/daiilynews.cu.ma\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6921\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/daiilynews.cu.ma\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6922"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/daiilynews.cu.ma\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6921"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/daiilynews.cu.ma\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6921"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/daiilynews.cu.ma\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6921"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}