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Advertising is corrupt, but much of business (and public perception) is corrupt in a much similar way. What you are seeing is a lack of integrity shared by bus

Advertising is corrupt, but much of business (and public perception) is corrupt in a much similar way. What you are seeing is a lack of integrity shared by business leaders who don't ask for rigor when their minions report higher rates of "engagement". There's too much of an incentive for the people in charge to be satisfied with someone telling them that something is "up", and too much incentive for those coming up with the numbers to not perform due diligence. I've seen this multiple times firsthand. Our number of subscribers is through the roof! Mr. Corneroffice will be thrilled! Wait as sec... 90% of them are people we gave away free trials to. Ahh... fuck it. Mr. Corneroffice isn't gonna know or care, and neither will the investors. We're BigCo! Everything we say is considered official by most people anyway. After all, Mr. Corneroffice told us "fail fast, fail early" and "fake it 'til you make it". If he secretly knew I was including the free subscribers, he'd be proud! But he can't know because then I might not get that sweet, sweet bonus. Besides, it's not a lie, right?

seti0Cha 4y ago
Mr. Corneroffice has an incentive to catch BS like that, which is that aside from subscriber numbers, he's probably accountable for retention numbers, or even revenue numbers. If he accepts the fake numbers this month, his retention numbers are going to nosedive next month and he's going to look for a neck to choke. If he's content to fake all his numbers, his boss will have a similar counter-incentive, and so on all the way to the top until you reach investors, who are strongly incentivized to detect bullshit, if only to unload the stock onto some other sucker.