It is fundamentally a projection about the future using recent results, and transparent in its methodology. It’s shit methodology, but it’s not hiding anything. So I don’t know that I’d classify it as fraud.
Playing games with “revenue” is another problem, but because that’s misleading about the past, and making an active decision on whether to classify money that was never gonna end up in their pockets as revenue share to partners or cost of revenue. Companies sometimes engage in shenanigans where they give discounts but classify the discounts as marketing/sales expenses rather than foregone revenue. That kind of stuff strikes me as more squarely in the category of accounting shenanigans.
It is fundamentally a projection about the future using recent results, and transparent in its methodology. It’s shit methodology, but it’s not hiding anything. So I don’t know that I’d classify it as fraud.
Playing games with “revenue” is another problem, but because that’s misleading about the past, and making an active decision on whether to classify money that was never gonna end up in their pockets as revenue share to partners or cost of revenue. Companies sometimes engage in shenanigans where they give discounts but classify the discounts as marketing/sales expenses rather than foregone revenue. That kind of stuff strikes me as more squarely in the category of accounting shenanigans.