A separate thing stemming from the transparency of posting (very broad and basic) financials is that I am seeing a LOT of people overestimating their own ability at interpreting financial statements. I genuinely think that the transparency and posting is a nice thing that offers interesting information, but as someone who has worked with with SOX Compliant financial reporting, my thoughts when I see the cohost financials is “this is meaningless to me”, because I would need to ask dozens of follow up questions to feel confident on my interpretation of the data at all. And quite frankly, I don’t think any issue I would have with how a niche social media site financially constructs itself could conceivably cause me harm, or that I would be able to ascertain that level of understanding of their specific business structure without literally being a member of the cooperative and having access to their day to day records. And I do not believe I deserve that level of access for a website I make posts on. My takeaway on literally every cohost financial post is always, “huh, neat.”
