I think this skips over an important fact from the article - the head of growth + CEO were in the room making this request, then the eng director raised concerns, then they assuaged his concerns by saying it's ok for 'investor purposes'.
I can see the situation you're describing, sorta. Though if it was me and someone asked me to generate a list of 5 million real-ish user accounts in a report, I'd immediately ask why. If it's to commit fraud or lie to investors, I would be like hell no! If we're doing load testing or something legit, for sure. But I feel like benign use-cases of generating 5 million accounts would not include the "make it look real" aspect.
I also don't think the Reddit comparison makes sense, since Reddit didn't seek to sell the company at the time based on the # of users. Growth hacking is one thing, lying to investors about users is another. Because this data point was a key decision factor for a financial transaction, this fake information/lie becomes fraud.
I can see the situation you're describing, sorta. Though if it was me and someone asked me to generate a list of 5 million real-ish user accounts in a report, I'd immediately ask why. If it's to commit fraud or lie to investors, I would be like hell no! If we're doing load testing or something legit, for sure. But I feel like benign use-cases of generating 5 million accounts would not include the "make it look real" aspect.
I also don't think the Reddit comparison makes sense, since Reddit didn't seek to sell the company at the time based on the # of users. Growth hacking is one thing, lying to investors about users is another. Because this data point was a key decision factor for a financial transaction, this fake information/lie becomes fraud.