Report: Phia co-founders knew about hidden commission scheme months before denying it

Bloomberg's August 11 investigation, citing leaked Slack messages, reports Phia co-founders Phoebe Gates and Sophia Kianni knew about the shopping app's cookie stuffing — secretly earning sales commissions by dropping tracking codes onto users' phones — as far back as December 2025. Bloomberg also found the scheme was a purposefully built, toggleable feature, not the "bug" a Phia spokesperson described in July.