
I applied for an Apple Card. What they offered was a sexist insult - sonabinu
https://www.fastcompany.com/90429224/i-applied-for-an-apple-card-what-they-offered-was-a-sexist-insult
======
zepto
Did DHH have 20 times her wealth prior to their marriage?

It seems likely given that he is a guy who collects Zondas.

GS have stated that they don’t know your marital status or gender when they
make the decision.

There may well be sexism somewhere in how this works, but she doesn’t seem to
be making a good argument for where.

~~~
eesmith
They have been married "a long time", tweets Hansson. How long do you think is
long enough?

She's a millionaire too. And with a higher credit score.

How do you know that she doesn't also collect expensive items? Because it
sounds like you are fishing for a reason.

Her credit limit got raised, so apparently GS now thinks the algorithm messed
up.

You write: "GS have stated that they don’t know your marital status or gender
when they make the decision".

That's great - so, can they explain how they came to their assessment?

And can these models be published or otherwise made available for review in
case there are mistake or systemic errors? Why can't customer service do
anything better than say "wait 6 months and see what happens?"

What information does GS use, and does that information include an implicit
gender bias? For example, even if gender isn't known, it can often be inferred
from someone's first name.

Finally, Hansson also tweeted:

> It gets even worse. Even when she pays off her ridiculously low limit in
> full, the card won’t approve any spending until the next billing period.

How does that make any sense for a millionaire with a high credit score?

What would you consider a good enough argument that you wouldn't have written
your comment? Because it seems impossible for either Hansson to present an
argument that can satisfy you, at least, not without lawsuit and publication
of materials found through discovery.

~~~
zepto
Their marriage is irrelevant because as GS have stated, they don’t have that
information so they don’t take it into account.

They claim they don’t know the person’s gender.

If they are inferring that from a first name or from other information they
have then their statement is a lie.

By all means claim that GS are lying.

I’m curious to see what the result of the investigation is.

As for paying the card off in full and still not being able to spend more,
indeed that doesn’t make sense for a millionaire with a high credit score.
Clearly the system is not doing a good job of assessing what credit to offer
her.

However the fact that she is being treated differently from her husband, who
is not just a millionaire - but someone who is estimated to have >$100m, is
not evidence of sexism.

Sexism would be a systematic bias.

She hasn’t provided any evidence whatsoever of that, although she has
demonstrated that the system is bad at recognizing creditworthiness.

So yes - the bar for demonstrating sexism is indeed much higher, and yes,
materials about how the algorithm works so implicit biases can be evaluated
would necessarily be part of that.

I hope the New York Financial services investigation does get access to these
materials.

My guess is that if there _is_ a sexist bias it will take some tracking down,
and that it will be a result of industry wide practices.

I think this _should_ be reviewed across the board.

But I stand by my original comment that she hasn’t shown that there is sexism
at work in her own case.

~~~
eesmith
If it's irrelevant than your comment "prior to their marriage" is also
irrelevant, yes? Because that's what I was responding to.

They don't claim to not know the person's gender. They write "Our credit
decisions are based on a customer's creditworthiness and not on factors like
gender, race, age, sexual orientation or any other bias prohibited by law,"

That is, they might know the person's gender, but not include that in the
assessment.

Why must their statement be a lie if there is a gender bias? There are plenty
of reports of risk models which have an illegally discriminatory bias even
when not designed that way. For one example
[https://www.propublica.org/article/machine-bias-risk-
assessm...](https://www.propublica.org/article/machine-bias-risk-assessments-
in-criminal-sentencing) .

In that case, 'Brennan said it is difficult to construct a score that doesn’t
include items that can be correlated with race — such as poverty, joblessness
and social marginalization. “If those are omitted from your risk assessment,
accuracy goes down,” he said.'

As I pointed out, there are correlations between names and gender. Almost
certainly there are other correlations. A model might have trained on those
factors to produce a result with an illegal gender bias, even if that wasn't
deliberate.

When you write "the bar for demonstrating sexism is indeed much higher", do
you mean the bar for legal action, or the bar by which someone can make a
public accusation?

If I am black, and walk into a restaurant and refused service, then my white
spouse walks in 5 minutes later and gets service, do you expect that I must
remain quiet about it until I've demonstrated in a court of law that actual
illegal discriminatory practice occurred?

And if I go public before that's done, will you say that I haven't given you
enough evidence?

If yes, then in both cases, I think you are using the wrong threshold for when
it's relevant and useful to go public, because doing so is part of one way to
drive the resolution process.

Or, if I have a child who gets a rare illness due to some heavy metal
poisoning, and a local company is dumping those heavy metals into the water
supply, do I need to wait until there's conclusive evidence, as for a court of
law, before I go public about it?

In all three cases, sure, I can be wrong. (Courts can be wrong too.) But ...
so what?

~~~
zepto
Yes - it doesn’t matter whether it was prior to their marriage or not.

It seems entirely possible that DHH has 20x her net worth.

Perhaps that’s involved in their decision making, no?

See:
[https://twitter.com/gsbanksupport/status/1194022629419704320...](https://twitter.com/gsbanksupport/status/1194022629419704320?s=20)

“In fact we do not know your gender or marital status during the Apple Card
application process”.

So your comments about them knowing her gender are either false, or they are
lying.

The analogy of your examples is invalidated by GS’s statement that they didn’t
know her gender or marital status.

And yes - I agree that there may be some implicit bias in a scoring algorithm
somewhere along the line, or some other systemic influence. As I have said,
I’d like to see the investigation look into this possibility.

But “I got lower credit than my spouse”, simply is not evidence of sexism,
especially if the spouse is 20x richer.

~~~
eesmith
The own their wealth jointly. There is no 20x different in net worth. In a
community property state, any wealth made during their marriage is shared. For
example, in divorce it could be split equally between the two.

Again, DHH is _not_ 20x richer than his wife. They are equally rich under the
law. (Excepting any money that DHH made before the marriage, which, given that
it was a long time ago, is likely a small part of that wealth.)

This all came up recently during the divorce between Jeff and MacKenzie Bezos.
Amazon started after their marriage, and since Washington is a community
property state she was entitled to 1/2 of their shares in the divorce. It
wasn't that Jeff was 10,000x richer than MacKenzie was.

Please note the subtle distinction between what you wrote: "They claim they
don’t know the person’s gender." and the additional qualifier GS used "during
the Apple Card application process".

They very likely know that she is a woman, and married. Their statement is
that those aren't considered _during the application process_.

Thus, it's possible that I am not wrong, _and_ that they are not lying.

They don't need to know one's gender or marital status to violate anti-
discrimination laws, so I don't see the point of discussing that detail
further.

~~~
zepto
All this talk about community property is well known but not relevant.

It is _during the application process that the credit amount is decided on and
offered_ , and that is what the complaint about.

So how is it relevant to this discussion if they find out later?

~~~
eesmith
If you believe that it's relevant to claim 'It seems entirely possible that
DHH has 20x her net worth' then it's relevant to point out that they have
equal net worth, making your claim likely incorrect.

~~~
zepto
It’s not at all likely that their net worth is equal unless you assume they
both had equal net worth before they were married, which itself is highly
unlikely.

More importantly, the net worth you are referring to is only the value that
would be established in the event of a divorce, and indeed could only be
established with the knowledge that they were married.

Since GS doesn’t know about the marriage when they make the credit offer, we
know the figure you are using has no relevance whatsoever to the calculation
they _do_ use.

Do you actually now acknowledge that they don’t know the marital status or
gender of applicants when they offer the credit, or are you still denying
that?

If you do, why do you keep bringing this up?

~~~
eesmith
I have already addressed all of these points earlier.

Eg, you write "which itself is highly unlikely" while I wrote "Excepting any
money that DHH made before the marriage, which, given that it was a long time
ago, is likely a small part of that wealth."

You are of course free to have different opinions than I do, but I find it
tedious as it appears you are not reading what I have written.

I keep bringing this up because you are making what appear to be very weak
statements, then using those to suggest a stronger conclusion than it
warranted.

Consider your earlier phrase "It seems entirely possible that DHH has 20x her
net worth." This has a double layer of uncertainty - 'it seems' means it's
your opinion and 'entirely possible' means that you are accepting anything
except which is clearly impossible.

These are weak statements. In this case, what does "net worth" mean, how does
GS determine their individual net worths, and how does it affect the credit
process? As DHH wrote, "We have no separate bank or credit card accounts or
any separate assets".

Can you tell why you believe DHH might have 20x her net worth? Other than as
hypothetical constructed to defend the actions of a multinational company?

~~~
zepto
DHH might have 20x her net worth because athough it was a long time ago, he
had already been an owner at 37 signals for a few years before he got married.

Appreciation of assets owned before a marriage does not automatically
contribute community property - only income and newly acquired assets do.

DHH’s answer may further give insight into why she was offered a low amount.

If he is named as the primary account holder then it may not show up on her
credit reports even if it’s a joint account.

But so what? These facts aren’t relevant. Even if I’m wrong about them it
doesn’t matter.

I agree they are weak and that this is why you are bringing them up.

You are bringing these weak statements up to avoid responding to the real
problem with your position:

They don’t know her gender or that she’s married to him when they make the
assessment.

Do you still claim that they do?

