Prompted by a frustrated (and viral) Twitter thread about sexism underlying Apple Card's credit limit allowances, the New York State Department of Financial Services (NYSDFS) is opening a probe into Goldman Sachs’ credit card practices. The @AppleCard is such a fucking sexist program. My wife and I filed joint tax returns, live in a community-property state, and have been married for a long time. Yet Apple’s black box algorithm thinks I deserve 20x the credit limit she does. No appeals work. — DHH (@dhh) November 7, 2019 Apple Card is a joint venture between Apple and Goldman Sachs which was launched earlier this year. Sachs is responsible for all the credit decisions on the card. What happened? David Heinemeier Hansson, a Danish tech entrepreneur, on November 8, had tweeted his ire at how, despite having a worse credit score than his wife, he is allowed a 20X more credit limit than she is. Highlighting the problem of black boxed algorithms that replicate real world biases, he also pointed out that customer service couldn’t also do much in this case since "it's just the algorithm". She spoke to two Apple reps. Both very nice, courteous people representing an utterly broken and reprehensible system. The first person was like “I don’t know why, but I swear we’re not discriminating, IT’S JUST THE ALGORITHM”. I shit you not. “IT’S JUST THE ALGORITHM!”. — DHH (@dhh) November 8, 2019 6 different representatives across Apple, and Goldman Sachs have no visibility into this black boxed…
