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0 pointsyaseer4y ago0 comments

It's harder (though not impossible) to lie about revenue as a public company when your accounts are audited annually.

Online metrics aren't subject to the same level of scrutiny as standard financial statements. It's pretty common to see startups distort their metrics, but far fewer get away with falsifying their accounts.

I can imagine a future though when these metrics come under more legal scrutiny, just as accounting does now.

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vmception4y ago· 1 in thread

Public companies routinely "restate earnings results" years later after a whole new C-Suite is saddled with the problem and after all the prior personnel and traders at the time of the original earnings already got their profits.

It is disingenuous to say this is working well, assuming "well" means "prevent lying because 'audit'". It is working well for generating profits with minimal consequences for anyone.

yaseerOP4y ago

To be clear, I wasn't implying it's working well.

Just that financial statements have a legal framework and auditing system, whereas metrics don't even have that.

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