The Phia Scandal: How an AI Powered Fashion App Got Caught Cookie Stuffing

Phia was supposed to be the Google Flights for fashion. An AI shopping assistant co-founded by Phoebe Gates and Sophia Kianni, backed by $43.5M and a Coachella lineup of celebrity investors. Then researcher Ben Edelman caught their browser extension cookie stuffing: silently taking affiliate credit for sales it didn't drive, possibly even swiping commissions from your favorite influencers' links. In this solo episode, Eden breaks down how the scheme worked (feature flags, background tabs, and a setting literally called "enable coupon auto drop"), why it only targeted iPhone Safari users, whether Phia's Series A investors were misled, and what past cookie-stuffing cases, from the eBay wire fraud convictions to the ongoing Honey lawsuits, might tell us about what happens next. Sources mentioned in this episode: Ben Edelman's investigation: https://www.benedelman.org/phia-forced-clicks/ Brian Dunning's Blog Post Alleging Ebay's Involvement in Cooking Stuffing: https://www.briandunning.com/fix_ebay.html