Innovative ways you've seen a company/startup pump up their metrics?

An Indian social app (not koo or sharechat) hired a guy who would go on different groups in the app and write “jai shri ram”. He will get about 40 replies saying the same. They said startup claimed high engagement and retention with this tactic

Created whole new metrics a.k.a Community Adjusted EBITDA lol

Hmm lol

Worked at a influencer focused eComm enablement play (not very well known)

We started charging the influencers a commission for their transactions (to finally make revenue)

Then, we would pass back benefits to them as marketing expenses.

So the revenues kept rising, but so did our marketing expenses, had no idea who this would’ve helped.

I guess this is common in e commerce but still, was surprised to see it first hand

1/ The retention numbers depends on the start point you take, if someone is amateur in understanding of retention and the way it is measured than this number can easily be gamed.
I’ve seen too many folks do it.

2/ heard some social app used to stream porn at night to improve engagement numbers.

“Ecommerce firm Meesho on Monday said it had turned profitable for the first time on a consolidated profit after tax (PAT) level in July”