Steve wozniak among those complaining of gender bias for the new apple credit card and Goldman Sachs. The latest from goldman. First, to our top story. Wework ceos search is said to include tmobile ceo john legere. John legere has ties to softbank. This comes at the same time as legere is pushing for a merger with sprint, whose owner is also softbank. Walk us through the news of today. Ellen as we reported this morning, it seems like he is one of several names up for consideration for a ceo search fo for wework. This is something that has kind of been percolating. Again, this may be a sign of softbank pulling the strings. We talked about they have a lot of control over wework. They have strong ties over john legere. In an amusing twist, ties with the executive chairman who is a former sprint leader and someone who in the past has sparred publicly at times with john legere over Telecom Industry beefs they had. One of them even called the other a conman on twitter. It seems like his name is in the ring. Kurt it has been six weeks since newman stepped down. What has been going on at wework on the executive front . Ellen it has been a long six weeks. In late september, there was the upheaval. Adam neumann stepped down. We had these coceos, they come onto take the reins. Pretty quickly, softbank installs the executive chairman. It has been interesting to watch. He has been handson with addressing staff. Sending out all staff emails, saying, if you have any concerns or questions, feel free to email me. He seemed very forward. At the same time, it seems the company is Going Forward with a multipronged search for a new ceo. One of them could be john legere, but they want to keep open the possibility for other names. Kurt we have been hearing a lot about layoffs. How important do you think it is to get a ceo in there during this transition period . This is someone who will have his or her first reputation with employees tied to a lot of transition stuff. How important is it to get an employee in quickly . Ellen they should probably pick one person and stick with it. A bit of whiplash going on. As soon as adam steps down, it is pretty clear that they will be running the show, then there is a new person coming in. Now, it seems like he is running the show. Im sure they are reading the news today and they, when are we going to get some stability doing our jobs and building this , business . Kurt do you have a sense to how quickly we could get answers . Ellen no. As always with wework, these plans are up for changing. They do not really know. I assume they are trying to figure out the best past that best path forward to keep the company alive. Kurt what is the next step for this executive search . Set the ceo search assigned. Ceo search aside. What else are you paying attention to . Ellen their goal, which they stated publicly, is profitability. They are thinking, how do we convince people that this is a business worth pursuing . Even the softbank talk about how the core business is very valuable. This is a product people want to pay for. The company, its main priority is to try to cut expenses that may come in the form of layoffs. Toting expenses and trying rightsize the business, which means getting rid of a lot of ancillary lines they have and focus on making money. Which was not something they focused on at all for the first nine years of their existence. Kurt making money is good for businesses, i am told. Bloombergs ellen huet, thank you for joining us. Still ahead, Goldman Sachs is the target of a wall street probe into its credit algorithm. We will talk to the apple cofounder, Steve Wozniak. He was among the first people to flag the issue. This is bloomberg. Kurt there is plenty of anxiety on social media, especially for people who feel the pressure of competing with other users. Instagram is now looking to reduce that feeling on the photo sharing platform, and the facebookowned Company Thinks the key is to remove the like counts on posts. It is already doing in countries like canada, japan, and brazil. We spoke to the head of instagram, adam mosseri. Instagram a little bit. We are really focused on young counts private, it may allow people to focus for a little bit more on what they care about. We have been testing this in a number of countries around the world. The idea being, if i cant see how many likes your photo gets, that might decrease my pressure around sharing myself . Adam you will be able to see how many likes your own photo gets but not how many likes other peoples photos get. The idea is to reduce anxiety and social comparison, specifically with an eye towards young people. Kurt what are you seeing . Is it changing the way people interact with instagram . Adam we are seeing Different Things in different countries. We want to understand how it changes how people use instagram but more importantly, how it , changes how people feel. Measuring how people feel is tricky. That is why the test has been running for so long and that is why it will take some time. You must feel that people are feeling better about instagram as a result of this. You wouldnt be rolling it out in other markets if not. Adam we are seeing encouraging data, which is why we are rolling it out further to try to learn how it works in other countries as well. We will see how it does in the u. S. Kurt are there other things that you guys are thinking about on the same front, either around metrics are some other way und the way people share or some other way around the way people share that might change the feelings people have . Adam when you think about wellbeing and safety and integrity more broadly, i think there are three areas. Acute issues, things like hate speech and try to address them. The second is that we are trying to take issues we can lead on. Like bullying for instance. We are trying to innovate. It disproportionally only affects young people disproportionately affects young people. We are trying to rethink some of the fundamentals about how instagram works. The combination of things, i hope, will change how people feel about what we do. None of this there is no one silver bullet. It is a broader cultural shift on how we think about what we do. Kurt that was adam mossari, the head of instagram. To discuss this further, i would like to bring in the cofounder of common sense media. Why did you think when you saw that . What did you think when you saw that . Jim i would like to know where they were for the last five years. We have been complaining to the folks at instagram and facebook for years about the comparison culture that kids are growing up in. Instagram is one of the major culprits, if not the most important culprit. I thought it was nice to hear him finally to think about trying it in a few markets. The truth is, this is an enormous challenge for kids and teens today. Facebook and instagram buried their heads in the sand on this issue. It is about time they started to do something. They should get rid of likes altogether. Kurt one thing that i wasnt super happy with the answer i got was, how is this changing User Behavior . Do you have a sense of what this does to the platform . Jim it is interesting because what they want is to keep you there, so they can make money via advertising. The truth is, they should be measuring the impact on the social and Emotional Health of kids, and on the Mental Health of kids. We see increasing anxiety among kids and teens who spend a lot of time on social media. They are very late to the party, but at least they are doing something. Kurt the fact they are rolling it out in such big markets, brazil and the United States, do you get the sense that this could hurt facebooks business in any way . Jim no matter how much criticism facebook gets and how much their brand has been tarnished and people dont always associate instagram with facebook, but they should. Their business has been incredibly strong. From a democracy standpoint or, in this case, a kids and family standpoint they are causing a , lot of harm. I would like to see adam be bolder. Remove the likes and look at the behavior of people on the platform. Kurt should we take anything from the fact that this is instagram testing this and not facebook . Why are we not seeing this on the bigger facebook platform . Jim because they are making so much money on facebook this way. It keeps you there. Method triedandtrue and a designed method to manipulate you and keep users there. They know that. The big thing here is the crisis of conscience at facebook, instagram, and in the broader Tech Industry. How should they be held responsible for some of the consequences of the platforms they have created . They are so late to try to take these issues on. It is a start. You look at what is going on in the political advertising realm. You have some of the major issues there as well. These guys should be under serious scrutiny and accountability from folks like common sense media. All of the viewing public. Kurt your brother, tom, is obviously running for president. I saw that he was the secondhighest spender on facebook ads behind donald trump. What do you think about the policy they have, not Fact Checking politicians . Do you think that is a problem . Jim i think it is a big problem , and i think it is hypocritical. If that means that my brother or even our host, Mike Bloomberg, does not advertise on facebook, that would be fine. The First Amendment does not apply to facebook. It applies to government entities. What they have said is, we will put lies on the air and we will try to moderate some of them, but basically, we will pretty much let anything go. If it means that my brother would have to stop advertising on facebook, too bad. If it means that Mike Bloomberg cannot take out ads on facebook, too bad. Our democracy is more important than one amount of money that facebook can make from political ads. It is a very disappointing policy, particularly in light of twitter which has not , particularly been the best Corporate Citizen in the world. They should stop it now. Kurt do you think these changes by facebook, either their policies around political ads whether changes to like counts, does that set standards in the industry . Does that set the bar for everybody else . Jim i dont think so. If you speak to other Corporate Executives in the Tech Industry like i do, they are not big fans of facebook. They want facebook to be the demon. They are happy to have facebook criticized so their behavior is not criticized. I dont think facebook sets the bar for anybody now. Their brand is so much lower in the Public Perception today. Because of the hacking of the democracy, because of the challenges for kids and teens that we are describing. The problem is, they are the biggest platform when it comes to elections and also issues like likes. When they are not held responsible and they do not , change their behavior, we all lose as a society. Kurt thank you for your thoughts. Jim stier of common sense media, thank you for joining us. Much more on Bloomberg Technology coming up. This is bloomberg. Kurt another top story we are following. Bloomberg has learned that a wall street regulator is looking into Goldman Sachs credit card practices after an entrepreneur alleged apple card algorithms discriminated against his wife. The card is a joint venture between apple and goldman. Goldman said it is possible for two family members to receive significantly different credit decisions. Joining us as the finance reporter. Explain what is happening here and what we learned over the weekend. This all started a few days ago when david hanson, a tech entrepreneur, started complaining online about how he got a much higher credit limit than his wife, even though she has a better credit score, they share joint accounts, effectively she has the same , spending power, yet his credit limit was 20 times higher. The post immediately got traction online. To add insult to injury, you had apple cofounder Steve Wozniak saying, i faced the same issue. Before you know it, it got wall street regulators saying, we want to look into the Credit Assessment models to see what goes into the decisionmaking process to ensure that there is not any bias even if unintentional. Kurt who exactly is being investigated and by who . Is this an apple issue, Goldman Sachs issue . Who is under fire . This is an apple card. But the truth is, it is Goldman Sachs, a top wall street bank, theyre responsible for all of the banking partnership. They determine the credit lines. The the new York Department of Financial Services is a new york regulator that oversees goldman. Since it is goldman who is setting it up, goldman knew as the proprietary system, they said, we want to look into this black box and see what goes into the decisionmaking process just to make sure you are not reinforcing problems weve had with the Credit Assessment system for decades, frankly. Kurt thank you very much. As we mentioned earlier, this investigation was launched in response to a series of tweets by tech entrepreneur david hansen. One of those tweets said apple offers a credit card that bases assessments on a black box algorithm that six different reps across apple and gs have no visibility into. It is just the algorithm. David joins us now from los angeles. Can you explain the process that led you to these tweets from late last week . David i signed up for the apple card as soon came out. Out. Soon it came i was excited about the fact that apple was going to launch a new credit card. My wife was excited for the card. She signed up shortly after i did. My application went through just fine and i got a reasonable credit limit assigned to me. My wife showed up shortly thereafter with the same Financial Information i used. The same household income, the same credit history. We have been married for eight years. We have the same credit cards, lines of credit. Everything the same. She ends up with a credit limit that is unusually low, 20 times less then what mine was. We thought at first, this was a mistake. We can Contact Apple and ratify this. So we do. Go through a series of reps, managers, escalations, and everyone keeps telling us, it is the algorithm. They dont know why it arrives at the verdicts it does. The only thing they could tell us is, check back in six months. That struck both of us as patently unfair. We had the same financial situation. Pay same capacity to ree loans. We should get the same treatment. Unfortunately, what happens is that apple just washes their hands, they hand it to Goldman Sachs, essentially a subcontractor. No one signs up because it is issued by Goldman Sachs. They sign up because it is apple. We as consumers, we took them at their word. This gets handed over to Goldman Sachs, we go around in circles, and the best they can come up with is essentially to say that the assessment is individual. You can end up with different scores. No insight as to how they arrive at their verdict. We are left just screaming at a black box, trying to appeal to humans inside of both of those organizations. The algorithm is apparently completely out of control, and it just spits out verdicts that we are supposed to take at face value . That is not right. We should have insight into the algorithm, be able to correct any errors the algorithm and inputs may entail, and then be able to review and compare the whole thing. Otherwise, how would we know if this card is actually sexist . If apple and Goldman Sachs simply say, it is the algorithm we dont know what the inputs , are, but trust us. That this is a fair and impartial process. Trust what . How has Goldman Sachs and the industry in general earned any trust from consumers to take them at their word . They havent. Kurt let me hop in real quick. You in the process of working with Customer Service. Have you heard from the Companies Higher ups, either at apple or Goldman Sachs . Has the fact that apple cofounder Steve Wozniak has gotten involved, has that gotten a response to you about this issue . David in part. On saturday, two apple managers called my wife to apologize for the algorithm. They gave her the vip bulb. They basically matched her credit limit to mine, not because they found out the algorithm was wrong, but because they clearly smelled there was a pr issue. They just said, now that this is a pr problem, here you go. Your wife can have a 20x credit limit. That completely undermines the defense they have that this is an individual process. And that Goldman Sachs is in charge of the underwriting process. It was managers who called my wife, managers who told her from apple that she would be bumped on her limit. On sunday, after the new york regulator has gotten involved, we got a lawyerly letter from Goldman Sachs that was clearly written, not to my wife, but to the new york regulators essentially saying, we do not discriminate on gender. They provided a few bits of information that did not add up. The timeline did not add up. This was them trying to cover up for regulators rather than answer the real questions. This is a black box algorithm. Maybe now, the regulators are able to peek under the covers. Why shouldnt all consumers be able to peek under the covers . Why shouldnt we all be able to know the information we are being judged upon . It is like there is a secret court with secret evidence and you being judged on your worth. To be judged in that court and to find out, you are not worth one 20th of what your husband is, it is deeply offen