In spite of repeated attempts, over several weeks, I have still not been successful in deleting my Facebook account. I suspect that I am not the only person who has been denied the "right" to delete their account. Facebook programming deflects people who attempt to delete accounts into "dormant" accounts or "memorial" accounts. Pop-ups appear that purport to wanting to help me. They don't help.
Time to turn up the heat.
I contend that a publicly traded company that refuses to allow subscribers to delete their accounts (both actively refuses and tacitly fails-to-delete), and then uses those inflated counts in documents released to the public, both in hard-copy and electronically, is knowingly engaged in equities fraud.
Growth stocks
Growth stocks are valued not just on their current earnings but on a discounted cash flow of all future earnings. Investors look at current revenues and profits, customer base growth and rate of customer base growth rate.
A company may be growing by leaps-and-bounds but if the rate of growth does not exceed analysts' estimates then the company's stock price tanks. In a sense, a "growth" company is like a horse whip. A very small twitch of the handle leverages out into a brutal whiplash at the business end.
Facebook currently lists about 1,300,000,000 subscribers. That is about 20% of the earth's population. Their "market capitalization" is $146 per subscriber. That number is silly. Back out the subscribers with third world incomes. Back out people who hold multiple accounts. Back out the "memorial" accounts, that is, the dead customers. Back out those of us who want to delete our accounts. Back out the accounts by young children. One ends up with a market cap per subscriber that is astronomical.
If Facebook's tacit refusal to allow me to delete my account is not fraud, then it is separated from fraud by the most ethereal of technicalities.
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