What Comes After CookieGate?
The Phia scandal (re)exposed the fragility of the 37-year-old affiliate economy.
In July 2026, Trust in the Affiliate Economy (TITAE, to its friends) died at its home near the checkout page. It was 37 years old. The headlines are calling it murder, with CookieGate (you heard it here first) delivering the fatal blow. CookieGate (an apt moniker given the co-founder’s last name) involved the celebrity-funded browser extension Phia, which had been caught "cookie stuffing”: slipping its own tracking code into purchases and taking credit for sales it never influenced.
A bug, according to the founders. A feature, according to just about everyone else, a nail that Ali Kriegsman hits on the head in her latest piece. CookieGate also flung open the (jar)lid on a deeper problem with the affiliate economy, which is based on the last-click attribution model: whoever wedges themselves closest to the checkout goes home with the commission. The inevitable result is every “salesperson” beelining to the register to have their last word click. It’s what happened last week. It’s what happened with…