{"id":198276,"date":"2026-08-22T21:12:11","date_gmt":"2026-08-22T21:12:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/198276\/"},"modified":"2026-08-22T21:12:11","modified_gmt":"2026-08-22T21:12:11","slug":"seattle-radio-station-kiro-news-claims-the-powerful-and-wealthy-are-protecting-bill-gates-daughter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/198276\/","title":{"rendered":"Seattle radio station Kiro News claims the powerful and wealthy are protecting Bill Gates’ daughter"},"content":{"rendered":"

The most striking part of the controversy surrounding Phoebe Gates<\/a> may not be what her startup is accused of doing, but how little attention the story has attracted outside business and technology circles.<\/p>\n

That was the argument made by KIRO fill-in hosts Angela Poe Russell and Jim Dever, who questioned whether Gates\u2019 family name has softened the scrutiny surrounding Phia, the AI shopping company she co-founded with Sophia Kianni.<\/p>\n

Bill Gates’ daughter casually reveals her billionaire father may have Asperger’s<\/p>\n

Bloomberg has reported that Phia used a practice known as cookie stuffing, which can allow a company to claim affiliate commissions for purchases it didn’t actually generate.<\/p>\n

Internal Slack messages cited in the reporting indicated that the founders were aware of concerns surrounding the practice months before Phia publicly described the issue as a recently discovered bug.<\/p>\n

\u201cBias is not just how you cover a story and how you report it \u2014 it\u2019s who you choose to pay attention to and who you ignore,\u201d Russell said on The John Curley Show.<\/p>\n

Phia has denied intentionally committing fraud and said features that caused misattributions were removed. The company has also said it is reviewing transactions and issuing reversals to affected brand partners.<\/p>\n

Is Gates getting special treatment?<\/p>\n

The discussion quickly turned from Phia\u2019s business practices to the influence that can come with being the daughter of Bill and Melinda Gates.<\/p>\n

KIRO producer Joe Wallace said he would be surprised if Phoebe Gates faced severe consequences even if wrongdoing were eventually established.<\/p>\n

\u201cI would be surprised if she faces anything beyond a financial penalty, and probably not even a big one,\u201d Wallace said.<\/p>\n

Asked why, he responded: \u201cBecause she\u2019s the daughter of Bill Gates, and they have an ungodly amount of wealth at their disposal.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd power,\u201d Dever added.<\/p>\n

Those comments are opinion, not evidence that Gates\u2019 family wealth has influenced any regulator, investigation or media organization. Neither Gates nor Kianni has been criminally charged over the reported affiliate practices.<\/p>\n

Still, the financial consequences for Phia have already been significant. Bloomberg reported that average daily revenue fell sharply after the disputed tracking features were disabled, while affiliate platform Impact.com suspended the company from its marketplace.<\/p>\n

Secretive Stanford course draws fresh attention<\/p>\n

The KIRO hosts also pointed to Gates\u2019 time at Stanford, where she participated in an unofficial, invitation-only program called \u201cSo You Think You Can Rule the World?\u201d<\/p>\n

The course reportedly accepted just 12 students and focused on power structures, networking and navigating complex systems. Former participants have described it as highly selective and secretive.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a handpicked group of 12 students,\u201d Dever said. \u201cThey weren\u2019t allowed to talk about it.\u201d<\/p>\n

The class has gained renewed attention because Gates later used relationships built at Stanford while developing Phia. The startup launched in 2025 and went on to raise tens of millions of dollars from prominent investors.<\/p>\n

None of that proves improper influence. But for Russell, the wider question remains whether a less connected founder facing the same allegations would have escaped such an intense national spotlight.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is the daughter of one of the wealthiest people in the world,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The most striking part of the controversy surrounding Phoebe Gates may not be what her startup is accused…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":189535,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[156],"tags":[651],"class_list":["post-198276","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-bill-gates","tag-bill-gates"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@people\/117141225299143882","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198276","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=198276"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198276\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/189535"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=198276"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=198276"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=198276"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}