A lawsuit filed against Snap Inc. by a former employee claims the company reported false growth numbers to investors in an effort to inflate its valuation.
The plaintiff, Anothony Pompliano, joined the company (then known as Snapchat) as a growth lead in September of last year from Facebook. Pompliano claims the company’s “institutional pandemic” of misrepresentation of its user numbers was fueled by its pursuit of a multi-billion dollar initial public offering (IPO) — a number of prior reports have claimed the company could go public as soon as March.
Snap’s visual messaging app Snapchat is known for its popularity with younger millennials (aged 25 and under). Despite remaining tight-lipped about its official statistics, leaked reports put its daily active user base at 150 million (higher than that of fellow social platform Twitter). Additionally, its daily video views count hit an impressive 10 billion in April 2016. Numbers like these have had the industry buzzing over its expected IPO, with analysts claiming the company could be valued as high as $25 billion.
Pompliano alleges that execs from the firm lied to him about Snapchat’s growth numbers (although the company did not have a user growth team in place to track its metrics). He also claims Snapchat CSO Imran Khan regularly misreported numbers to its backers, including during a bid to secure a $200 million investment from Chinese ecommerce giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. We reached out to Snap for a comment but did not immediately receive a response.
According to the suit, Snap never invested in building a growth and engagement team because its CEO Evan Spiegel didn’t care about user metrics. It allegedly only made the move to hire Pompliano when it realized that a lack of key performance indicators could impact its IPO.
Pompliano’s tenure at Snapchat lasted just three weeks. He claims that his employment was “unlawfully terminated” after he warned several execs at the company that their current practices had to stop. Afraid that Pompliano would “blow the whistle,” Snapchat let him go less than a month after he started the job, claims the suit.
Pompliano — who led the growth team for Facebook Pages for over a year before jumping ship — adds that during his time at Snap he was pressured to reveal confidential information regarding his former employer. Since being laid off, Pompliano claims Snap has sought to “destroy his career” by waging a “smear campaign” against him.
Large sections of the lawsuit filed in Los Angeles County Superior Court have been blacked out, including references to the exact figures that were allegedly inflated by Snap. Pompliano’s attorney, David Michaels, told the Los Angeles Times the redactions are to protect information that is subject to a confidentiality agreement between his client and Snap. The company will now file to maintain the redactions, adds Michaels.
Pompliano is seeking an injunction against Snap to prevent it from making false representations concerning the details surrounding his termination. He has also filed a separate arbitration claim seeking damages for lost wages, harm to his professional reputation, and damages based on Snap’s “wrongful” conduct.
Discord is trying to push more visibility on the internet for some of its biggest communities, and there's a good chance your messages could end up in a Google Search. The platform is preparing to make conversations from certain public servers searchable on the web, so there's a privacy setting you might want to check before the rollout begins.
According to Discord's official announcement, the changes will roll out in two stages. Starting November 16, qualifying servers will have public web pages featuring automated summaries of conversations. By mid-December, individual messages from eligible public channels could also appear word-for-word in Google and other search engines.
You just opened X and started typing your thoughts. Imagine the jump scare when a hand suddenly pops up on your screen, pointing at the promote button. It doesn’t say a word and simply points. For a growing number of X users, this isn’t a made-up scenario but something they have been seeing since yesterday, and very few of them are amused.
Most of us have learned to tune out the usual in-app upsells, whether it’s a glowing upgrade banner or a pop-up about a premium plan. A floating hand hovering over your draft is much harder to ignore, and that’s probably the whole point.
Scroll through any app for five minutes, and you’ll find someone maxxing something. Their skin, their sleep, their protein intake, even their Friday night on the couch. That little suffix has been everywhere this year, and now it has a trophy to show for it. In a recent announcement, Dictionary.com named maxxing its 2026 Word of the Year.
What are people actually doing when they’re maxxing?